Server Side XSLT Transform? 1

[spiel2001]

Okay... I'm about up to my neck in trying to solve all these browser dependent issues with XML/XSLT transforms!

I like the idea of leaving the transform to the client as it nicely offloads the processing overhead that the sorting and everything else requires. However, the HUGE issues of trying to get it all to wrk in everyone's browsers is outweighing the benefits of the distributed processing in a big hurry.

To that end, I'm seriously considering moving the XSL transform to the server side... I'm running Apache on a freeBSD box and using C++ compiled CGI scripts to generate the XML

Anyone have suggestions on either a reliable Apache module that would transform on the server side (from the CGI output, not static XML files) and/or, better still, a solid (efficient) C or C++ library I could embed in my scripts to do the transform on the server side?

Any and all suggestions, comments, etc. on this would be greatly appreciated.

~groan~

 

[JJR]

If you want to use apache, Xalan and Xerces are (fairly) reliable products. If you want to do the transform using C++, just use the Microsoft parser for XML (MSXML4.0). It's free and can be downloaded at

http://msdn.microsoft.com.

Jordi Reineman

 

[spiel2001]

Jordi --

Thanks... Don't thing MSXML is going to run on my freeBSD boxes, though. That's why I was looking into a C or C++ library for that purpose. I've found quite a few on the web. The problem is I have no idea which ones are worth a hoot and which are garbage.

 

[spiel2001]

On this subject -- Two products I've found that look somewhat interesting... XSLC v0.4 is supposed to compile an XSL stylesheet into C++ code for translating XML input, then there's XSLJIT which is supposed to be a just-in-time compiler that produces efficient machine code on the fly to transform XML input.

Is anyone familiar with either of these products -- pro or con?

 

[MrTom]

i can recommend libxml and libxslt as great tools - written in C too! they are used as the base xml libraries for Gnome.
i use them in production and they are very stable and very fast. they follow the standards really well as well as implementing most of EXSLT.
you can get the libraries from

http://www.xmlsoft.org

and there is also a perl module which is simple but effective (altho it's Makefile.PL is awful). the perl module can be found on CPAN.

 

[spiel2001]

MrTom --

Thanks. I was debating whether or not to give those a go but couldn't find anything that addressed their speed or reliability. Thanks for the confidence boost.

Think I'll give them a go and will report back on the pain level when I'm done