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I'm a LAMP web developer in Perl and at my current place we use some black magic in using Perl to retrieve the data, throw them into a XML and then pass the XML to an XSL file. And this is all handled magically by the almighty AxKit. Thus you can probably imagine that my XSL is full of XSLT lines, i.e. if test,@value etc.

I was wondering if there's any tool, IDE, etc which I can use to open the XSL file and check the HTML preview without having to modify anything in my current XSL?

I'm open for suggestions as long as it gets the job done. Thanks.

Dimitre Novatchev
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melaos
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  • @melaos: The topxml.com site was fatally broken and has been in this state for long. XPV for IE: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/511942/best-xpath-expression-evaluator-eclipse/512352#512352 XPV for Mozilla: http://www.topxml.com/code/cod-422_9827_xpath-visualizer-for-the-mozilla-browser.aspx – Dimitre Novatchev Feb 05 '09 at 06:49

7 Answers7

8

XSLT IDEs (Interactive Development Environments):

  • XSelerator (the one I've been using for 6-7 years). Free, has a Debugger for MSXML, has intellisense for both XSLT 1.0 and XSLT 2.0. In addition has some dynamic intellisense. The debugger has breakpoints, data breakpoints,visualizes temporary trees, variables, test conditions, current output, ..., etc.
  • VS2008 -- a good XML Editor + XSLT Debugger. Good static intellisence. Match patterns are statically checked. Breakpoints, data breakpoints, visualization of variables and the current output.
  • oXygen
  • XML-SPY (Altova)
  • Stylus Studio

XPath tools:

Update:

Both the IE and the FF versions of the XPath Visualizer have now a new, safe home, thanks to the hospitality of Lars Huttar. The links below point to the new, safe site.

  • The XPath Visualizer -- A popular IE-based tool for learning XPath and FF-based, too, by playing with XPath expressions. Free and open source. Allows any XPath expression to be evaluated against a given XML document and displayes the results hi-lighted in the xml document (if they are node(s)) or in a separate box (if the results are atomic values). Allows xsl:variable-s to be defined and then used in XPath expressions. Allows xsl:key-s to be defined and then referenced by key() functions within XPath expressions.
Dimitre Novatchev
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  • wow, sounds awesome and definitely can't beat the price. thanks :) – melaos Feb 04 '09 at 14:33
  • @Dimitre Btw i can't seem to find anything from your XPath Visualizer link. Can you check? thanks. – melaos Feb 05 '09 at 03:21
  • The topxml.com site was almost fatally broken and has been in this state for long. XPV for IE: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/511942/best-xpath-expression-evaluator-eclipse/512352#512352 XPV for Mozilla: http://www.topxml.com/code/cod-422_9827_xpath-visualizer-for-the-mozilla-browser.aspx – Dimitre Novatchev Feb 05 '09 at 06:49
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    @Daniel-Silveira Yes, it works OK, must be started as administrator. – Dimitre Novatchev May 09 '09 at 14:28
  • Xselerator does not have an installer. When I run it, I get the error: "CoCreate failure on IAltovaAPplication. Error: Class not registered." It looks like the application still works, but I'm not very confident in it. – Alek Davis Jun 23 '09 at 23:02
  • Tried to download XPath Visualizer and got a scary safe browsing report from Google. Check it out: http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://www.topxml.com/code/cod-422_10119_xpath-visualizer-14.aspx – Alek Davis Jun 23 '09 at 23:06
  • @alek-davis The CoCreate" error is because XSelerator expects AltovaXML to be installed. From my experience this doesn't afect the work of the product. – Dimitre Novatchev Jun 24 '09 at 01:40
  • @alek-davis The topxml.com site may have its own problems, but the download of the XPathVisualizer was OK the last time I tried it. I don't know what exactly the Google's safebrowsing report finds as problematic. – Dimitre Novatchev Jun 24 '09 at 01:44
  • @Dimitre: Per Google: "Of the 867 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 193 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. Malicious software includes 1085 trojan(s), 104 scripting exploit(s), 8 worm(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 8 new process(es) on the target machine. Malicious software is hosted on 18 domain(s), including ca9x.com/, kaishi2009.com/, datongpu.com/. 2 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including ca9x.com/, 51of.net/." – Alek Davis Jun 24 '09 at 05:11
  • @alek-davis That's very sad... I will have to put all my tools and snippets to some other site then: if and when I have free time. Thank you for letting me know. – Dimitre Novatchev Jun 24 '09 at 16:36
2

I am currently using Visual Studio, open your xml file within visual studio, from XML menu click show xslt output.

Bashar Kokash
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I found Stylus Studio to be an invaluable tool for all my XML needs. I never ran it rough Wine though.

Martijn Laarman
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I'm using Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition...under my XML menu all I see is "Schemas..." when I have an XSL file open. Did I miss installing a component for the other options?

SLeepdepD
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I use cooktop which is free.

Bhushan Bhangale
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1

Try Microsoft XML Notepad

Martin Jonáš
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A couple of alternatives that haven't been mentioned, yet:

  • XML Copy Editor - Okay, but requires an intermediate step to generate HTML and then open HTML in an external browser.
  • WMHelp XMLPad - Many minor bugs and annoyances, but otherwise very useful: can review and debug transformations within the IDE.

I wrote a post describing these and a couple of other tools, in case someone is interested: How to test XSL transformations.

Alek Davis
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