XSLT Tutorial - Basics

Web technology tutorials series
beginner

Introduction

This is a beginners tutorial for XSLT made from slides

Objectives

Understand the purpose of XSLT
Do simple transformations from XML to HTML
Understand the most simple XPath expressions (tag names)

Prerequisites

Editing XML (being able to use a simple DTD). Catch up with the Editing XML tutorial
If you plan to create your own XML: DTD tutorial
XML namespaces (some, have a look at the XML namespace article)
HTML and CSS (some)

Next steps

XPath tutorial - basics
XQuery tutorial - basics (if you have interest in XML databases)
PHP - MySQL - XML tutorial - basics (shows how to display an XML result-set retrieved form MySQL with XSLT)

Warning

XSLT is a rather complex transformation language. I believe that one could distinguish four levels of difficulty:

This tutorial is introductory (level 1)
Level 2 XSLT is more sophisticated template ordering, conditional expressions, loops, etc.
Level 3 is advanced XPath expressions
Level 4 is functional programming with templates

Tools

There are many XSLT processors. www.online-xslt-processor.tk is an automatic As You Type Online XSLT Processor website that will help you test the XSLTs.

Introduction Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations

Goals of XSLT

XSLT is a transformation language for XML
XSLT is a W3C XML language (the usual XML well-formedness criteria apply)
XSLT can translate XML into almost anything , e.g.:
- wellfomed HTML (closed tags)
- any XML, e.g. yours or other XML languages like SVG, X3D
- non XML, e.g. RTF (a bit more complicated)

So keep in mind that XSLT doesn't understand HTML at all !. Frequently, beginners assume that XSLT sort of knows about HTML, about pictures. All it can do is translate XML elements into something else.

History and specifications

Specification

XSLT 1.0 was formalized as W3C Recommendation on 16/11/99: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt
- Most modern web browser support most of it (even Safari)
XSLT 2.0 is a W3C recommendation since 23 January 2007: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/
- not implemented in current browsers, but in most good XSLT processors (e.g. Saxon)
XSLT 3.0 is a W3C working draf: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/

History

Initially, XLS (XSL: eXtensible Stylesheet Language) was a project to replace CSS for both display and print media and to provide support for complex formatting and layout features (pagination, indexing, cross-referencing, recursive numbering, indexing, etc.
XSLT ( Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations ) was originally intended as a small part of the larger specification for XSL
However, when the XSL specification draft became very large and complex it was decided to split the project into XSLT for transformations (that were urgently needed) and XSL for the rest (W3C recommendation of 2001)

Related languages

XPath (XML Path language used by XSLT, XQuery, etc.), http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath
XSL also called XSL/FO (the formatting language), http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/
XQuery (Query language for XML), http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/

A first glance at XSLT

Simple use of XSLT means writing a file (called a stylesheet) and to associate it with an XML file and the to view the XML file in a web browser. Alternatively, you can use an XML editor or a XSLT processor to translate an XML file with an XSLT file, then save the result file.

Root of an XSLT file stylesheet

<?xml version="1.0"?>
  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
                  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 ....
</xsl:stylesheet>

Mandatory elements

XML declaration on top of the file
A stylesheet root tag with the following version and namespace attributes:

  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
                  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

XSLT must be wellformed (and also obey the XSLT specification)
XSLT files usually have the *.xsl extension and should have the text/xsl or application/xml mimetype when served by http (a web server). So make sure that your webserver is configured correctly.

Association of XML and an XSLT file

You can directly associate a XSLT stylesheet with an XML file by using a so-called processing instruction (similar principle as CSS stylesheets)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
 <?xml-stylesheet href="project.xsl" type="text/xsl" ?>
 <yourxml> 
    .... 
 </yourxml>

Basic XSLT

Basic (!) use of XSLT means:

writing translation rules (aka templates) for each XML tag we want to translate
translating XML to HTML

A simple translation rule (called "template" in XSLT)

Example Translation of a title tag into HTML centered H1

XML Source we want to translate:

<title>Hello friend</title>

The XSLT rule that does it:

A complete XSLT example

(Hello XSLT)

XML file (source)

hello.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <?xml-stylesheet href="hello.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
  <page>
   <title>Hello</title>
   <content>Here is some content</content>
   <comment>Written by DKS.</comment>
</page>

Wanted result document

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd">
 <html>
   <head>
     <title>Hello</title>
   </head>
   <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
     <h1 align="center">Hello</h1>
     <p align="center"> Here is some content</p>
     <hr><i>Written by DKS</i>
   </body>
 </html>

The XSLT Stylesheet

hello.xslt

 <?xml version="1.0"?>                
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
                 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

 <xsl:template match="page">
    <html> <head> <title> <xsl:value-of select="title"/>
  </title> </head>
     <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
     </body>
    </html>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="title">
    <h1 align="center"> <xsl:apply-templates/>  </h1>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="content">
    <p align="center"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </p>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="comment">
    <hr/> <i><xsl:apply-templates/> </i>
   </xsl:template>
 </xsl:stylesheet>

Anatomy of a simple stylesheet

Rule execution order

(1) The XSLT engine first looks at the XML file and tries to find a XLT rule that will match the root element

E.g. in the above example it will find "page" and then the template for page

(2) The XSLT processor will then "move" inside the rule element and do further processing

HTML elements (or any other tags) will be copied to the output document
If an XSLT instruction is found, it will be executed

 <xsl:apply-templates/>  means: "go and look for other rules"

E.g. in the above example

the processor dealing with root element "page" will first find a rule for "title" and execute it according to the same principle.
once it is done with "title" and its children, it then will find the rule for "content" and execute it

(3) and so forth ....

More information

<xsl:value-of select="title"/> will retrieve contents of the "title" child element.
- In our example, it would only work in the template for "page", since only "page" has a "title" child
You have to understand that XSLT works down "depth-first" the XML tree, i.e.
- it first deals with the rule for the root element,
- then with the first instruction within this rule.
- If the first instruction says "find other rules" it will then apply the first rule found for the first child element and so forth...
- The rule of the root element is also the last one be finished (since it must deal step-by-step with everything that is found inside) !!!

The procedure recapitulated

(1) Create a XSLT stylesheet file: xxx.xsl

(2) Copy/paste the XSLT header and root element below (decide encoding as you like)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> 
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
</xsl:stylesheet>

(3) Write a rule that deals with your XML root element This rule must produce the root, head and body of the HTML (copy/paste this too, but replace " page ")

<xsl:template match="page">
   <html>
    <head> <title> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> 
      </title> 
    </head>
    <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </body>
   </html>
</xsl:template>

(4) Write rules for each (!!) of your XML elements,

for each insert some HTML, sometimes some text, or sometimes nothing
make sure to place a <xsl:apply-templates> inside each rule (usually between some HTML) ... unless you wish to censor contents.

(5) Associate this stylesheet with your XML file using:

 <xml-stylesheet href="xxx.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>

Tuning output with xsl:output and CSS

Output declarations

So far, HTML output produced would display in a naviagor, but is not fully HTML compliant.

xsl:output is an instruction that allows you to fine-tune XSLT translation output. Its definition is the following:

<xsl:output
 method = "xml" | "html" | "text"
 version = nmtoken
 encoding = string
 omit-xml-declaration = "yes" | "no"
 standalone = "yes" | "no"
 doctype-public = string
 doctype-system = string
 indent = "yes" | "no"
 media-type = string
/>

You should put this instruction in the beginning of the file (after xsl:stylesheet)

Example - Output in HTML 4 UTF-8 encoded

 <xsl:output method="html"
     encoding="UTF-8"
     doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"/>

Example - Output in HTML 4 ISO-latin encoded

 <xsl:output method="html"
     encoding="ISO-8859-1"
     doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"/>

Example - Output in HTML 5: Since HTML5 is neither SGML nor XML this is a bit more tricky, since HTML5 did not exist when XSLT was defined. Code below sort of works.

<xsl:output
     method="html"
     doctype-system="about:legacy-compat"
     encoding="UTF-8"
     indent="yes" />

 <xsl:template match="/">
   <html>
     <head>
       <meta charset="utf-8"/>
       <title>HTML5 + SVG example</title>
     </head>
     <body>
 .....
         </body>
 </html>

Example - Output in XHTML 1 transitional with a namespace

This is quite more complicated than producing simple HTML

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
                 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
 <xsl:output
    method="xml"
    doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
    doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    indent="yes"
    encoding="iso-8859-1" />

 <xsl:template match="recipe">
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
     <head> ... </head> ... <body> ... </body>
 </xsl:template>

Example - XHTML5 serialisation of HTML5

<xsl:output
     method="xml"
     omit-xml-declaration = "yes"
     doctype-system="about:legacy-compat"
     encoding="UTF-8"
     indent="yes" />

or maybe:

<xsl:output
     method="xml"
     doctype-system="about:legacy-compat"
     encoding="UTF-8"
     indent="yes" />

Example - Another XML language

<xsl:output
  method="xml" indent="yes"
  doctype-system="mydtd.dtd" />

Exemple - Output in SVG

<xsl:output
  method="xml"
  indent="yes"
  standalone="no"
  doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.0//EN"
  doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/PR-SVG-20010719/DTD/svg10.dtd"
  media-type="image/svg" />

CSS styling of HTHML

Associating a CSS stylesheet with HTML output is trivial:

add a link tag in the "head" produced by the template for the root element
.... in the hello.css file you then have to define styles of HTML elements you generate

cooking.xml

  <xsl:template match="hello">
   <html>
    <head>
     <link href="hello.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>
    </head>
    ......
 </xsl:template match="hello">

Example 3-5 - cooking

cooking.xsl inserts cooking-html.css into the HTML output

  <xsl:template match="recipe">
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
     <head>
       <title> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> </title>
       <link href="cooking-html.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>
     </head>
      <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
     </body>
    </html>
   </xsl:template>

If things go wrong

Frequent problems and remediation

Style-sheet error !

Validate the style-sheet in your XML editor
If it provides XSLT support, it will help you find the error spots

XHTML doesn't display in Firefox !

Firefox wants a namespace declaration in the XHMTL produced, do it (see above).

HTML doesn't seem to be right !

Transform the XML document within your XML editor and look at the HTML

In "Exchanger Lite", use Transform in the menu bar with the following parameters:

Transform->Execute Advanced XSLT
Input = current document
XSLT = Use Processing instructions

You also may validate the output HTML !

There is various unformatted text in the output !

See the XSLT default rule (below)

HTML still doesn't seem to be right !!

Use a XSLT debugger/tracer to understand how your XSLT executes

The XSLT default rule

When you test your first style sheet, it is likely that some of your contents will appear non-formatted.
This is due to the fact that XSLT will apply two default rules to all XML elements for which it didn't find a rule.
- If you forget to write a rule for a tag (or misspell tag names) this will happen .....
The XSLT default rules simply copy all contents to the output.

This rule applies to the document root element and all other elements. It will walk down the tree.

 <xsl:template match="*|/">
   <xsl:apply-templates/>
 </xsl:template>

If text is available in a node or attributes, they are just copied.

 <xsl:template match="text()|@*">
   <xsl:value-of select="."/>
 </xsl:template>

A modified default rule that will help you find missing pieces

simply cut/paste this to your XSLT (but remove it later on)

  <xsl:template match="*">
   <dl><dt>Untranslated node:
       <strong><xsl:value-of select="name()"/></strong></dt>
   <dd>
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </dd>
  </dl>
  </xsl:template>
 <xsl:template match="text()|@*">
   Contents: <xsl:value-of select="."/>
 </xsl:template>

Selective processing

Steering rule execution and information filtering

Instead of letting XSL apply rules in "natural order", you can tell which rules to apply when.

Example - Displaying the hello text without content

The rule for the root element will only "call" the rules for the "title" and the "comment" element
Information within a content tag will not be displayed (since we don't let the processor find rules by itself, but only let it execute a rule for "title" and another for "comment").

Hello2.xml

 <?xml version="1.0"?> 
  <?xml-stylesheet href="hello2.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
   <page>
    <title>Hello</title>
    <content>Here is some content</content>
    <comment>Written by DKS.</comment>
   </page>

Hello2.xsl

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

 <xsl:template match="page">
   <html> <head> <title> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> </title> </head>
    <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
     <!-- Steering rule execution below -->
     <xsl:apply-templates select="title"/>
     <xsl:apply-templates select="comment"/>
    </body>
   </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="title">
   <h1 align="center"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </h1>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="comment">
   <hr/> <i><xsl:apply-templates/></i>
  </xsl:template>

 </xsl:stylesheet>

Hello2.html

 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd">
 <html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello</title>
  </head>
  <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
    <h1 align="center">Hello</h1>
    <p align="center"> Here is some content</p> 
    <hr><i>Written by DKS</i>
  </body>
 </html>

A short glance at Xpath

XPath is a very powerful language to extract information from XML
XPath was published at the same time as XSLT 1.0 (1999)
Values of XSLT match and select attributes are XPath expressions

XSLT beginners don't need to know a lot about XPath (so don't worry right now !).
- Simply stick to the idea of writing a template for each XML tag, as explained before
XPath expressions can be more complicated:

<xsl:apply-templates select="course/module[position()=1]/section[position()=2]"/>

means: "find rule for 2nd section of the first module of course"

XPath also includes arithmetics and tests

"//Participant[string-length(Nom)>=8]"

means: "return all participant nodes with content of name longer than 7 characters"

Examples of a few simple XPath expressions (optional !)

These should remind you of CSS selectors

Syntax elemen	(Type of path)	Example path	Example matches
tag	element name	project	<project> ...... </project>
/	separates children	project/title	<project> <title> ... </title>
		/	(root element)
//	descendant	project//title	<project><problem> <title>....</title>
		//title	<racine>... <title>..</title> (any place)
*	"wildcard"	*/title	<bla> <title>..</title> and <bli> <title>...</title>
\|	"or operator	title\|head	<title>...</title> or <head> ...</head>
		\|/\|@	All elements: root, children and attributes
.	current element	.
../	parent element	../problem	<project>
@	attribute name	@id	<xyz id="test">...</xyz>
element/@attr	attribute of child	project/@id	<project id="test" ...> ... </project>
@attr='type'	type of attribute	list[@type='ol']	<list type="ol"> ...... </list>

Basic value extraction

The xsl:value-of instruction

inserts the value of an XPath expression and copies it to the output
e.g. you can take contents of an element or attribute values and insert them in HTML table cells.

Example - Value-of

Let's assume
that we have an author element somewhere in the XML code
that we would like to put this author information on top of the page
that we should like to display the value of the revision' attribute.

XML fragment

<page>
  <title>Hello</title> 
  <content revision="10 ">
      Here is some content</content>
  <comment>Written by <author>DKS</author> </comment>
</page>

XSLT rules

<xsl:template match="page">
     <P><xsl:value-of select="comment/author" /></P>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="content">
     <P>Revision number: <xsl:value-of select="@revision" /></P>
     <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

Inserting a value inside a string

If you want to insert information inside an HTML attribute value, things get a little bit tricky, since HTML value attributes are quoted and usually information within quotes is not interpreted. Read on ...

XSLT special syntax for inserting values into quoted attribute values

 {....}

This {...} construct is the equivalent of < xsl:value-of select="..."/> which can not be used here !!

Example - Building an HTML href tag from an XML email attribute

We will use both the {...} and the value-of select="" constructs.

The XML fragment

 <contact-info email="test@test">

The XSLT rule

 <xsl:template match="contact-info">

   <a href="mailto:{@email}"><xsl:value-of select="@email"/></a>

  </xsl:template>

The result

 <a href="mailto:test@test">test@test</a>

HTML Links

Think !! XSLT does not understand HTML. All you have to do is to translate your XML to HTML and not try to do any dark magic ....

(1) Links defined as simple element contents

XML example:

http://test.com/test/

XSLT solution, take 1 - Display "Click here" as link text

<xsl:template match="info">
 <a href="{.}">Click here</a>
</xsl:template>

XSLT solution, take 2 - displays the URL as link text

<xsl:template match="info">
 <a href="{.}"><xsl:value-of select="."/> </a>
</xsl:template>

(2) Links defined with two tags

XML example:

 <address>
  <name>TECFA</name>
  <url>http://tecfa.unige.ch</url> 
  </address>

XSLT solution:

 <xsl:template match="address">
   <a href="{url}"> <xsl:value-of select="name"/> </a>
 </xsl:template>

(3) Links defined like an HTML link

XML Example:

 <link url="http://tecfa.unige.ch">TECFA</link>

XSLT solution:

 <xsl:template match="link">
   <a href="{@url}"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </a>
 </xsl:template>

XML Example exactly like in HTML

<a href="http://tecfa.unige.ch">TECFA</a>

XSLT solution:

 <xsl:template match="a">
   <a href="{@href}"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </a>
 </xsl:template>

Example files, look at the source of each:

Source code: html-links.xml - html-links.xsl
More examples:links.xml - links.xsl

Dealing with pictures

There is no special "magic" for dealing with images, links, stylesheets etc. Simply:

look at your XML and figure out how to translate into equivalent HTML (or whatever else)
the following example demonstrates the use of value extraction
several other solutions than the one demonstrated exist ...

Example - Dealing with pictures

images.xml

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
 <?xml-stylesheet href="images.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
 <page>
  <title>Hello Here are my images</title>
  <list>
    <!-- pictures are either contents or attribute values of elements -->
   <image>dolores_001.jpg</image>
   <image>dolores_002.jpg</image>

   <image3 source="dolores_002.jpg">Recipe image</image3>
  </list>
  <comment>Written by DKS.</comment>
 </page>

images.xsl

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:template match="page">
   <html> <head> <title> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> </title> </head>
    <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
     <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </body>
   </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="title">
   <h1 align="center"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </h1>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- pictures are either contents or attribute values of elements -->
  <xsl:template match="list">
   Images are element contents, apply a template to all image elements:
   <xsl:apply-templates select="image"/>
   Images are attribute values of an element, we do it differently:
   <xsl:apply-templates select="image3"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="image">
    <p> <img src="{.}"/> </p>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="image3">
    <p> <img src="{@source}"/><br/><xsl:value-of select="."/> </p>
  </xsl:template>


  <xsl:template match="comment">
   <hr/> <i><xsl:apply-templates/></i>
  </xsl:template>

 </xsl:stylesheet>

Real life example (examine the source of both files):

Sorting

Sometimes you wish to sort elements. This should encourage you to study what I call XSLT level 2 (programming constructs).

XML

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
 <?xml-stylesheet href="participants.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
  <participants>
   <participant>
    <FirstName>Daniel</FirstName>
    <qualification>8</qualification>
    <description>Daniel will be the tutor</description>
    <FoodPref picture="dolores_001.jpg">Sea Food</FoodPref>
   </participant>
   <participant>
    <FirstName>Jonathan</FirstName>
    <qualification>5</qualification>
    <FoodPref picture="dolores_002.jpg">Asian</FoodPref>
   </participant>
   <participant>
    <FirstName>Bernadette</FirstName>
    <qualification>8</qualification>
    <description>Bernadette is an arts major</description>
   </participant>
    <participant>
    <FirstName>Nathalie</FirstName>
    <qualification>2</qualification>
   </participant>
  </participants>

XSL

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output method="html" 
    encoding="ISO-8859-1" 
    doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"/>

 <xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
    <head>
      <title>Participants List</title>
    </head>
    <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
      <h1>Participants list</h1>
      Shows how to build a simple sorted table with XSLT.
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </body>
  </html>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="participants">
    <table border="2" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="6">
    <tr><th>Qualification</th>
        <th>First Name</th>
        <th>Description</th>
        <th>Food Picture</th>
     </tr>
     <xsl:for-each select="participant">
       <xsl:sort select="qualification"/>
      <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="qualification"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="FirstName"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="description"/></td>
      <td><xsl:if test="FoodPref/@picture"><img src="{FoodPref/@picture}"/></xsl:if></td>
      </tr>
     </xsl:for-each>
    </table>	
 </xsl:template>

 </xsl:stylesheet>

Exercise

Here is a simple XML file and an unfinished XSLT Stylesheet. Try to complete it.

XML (copy/paste)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <?xml-stylesheet href="cooking.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>

 <recipe>
     <recipe_head>
	<recipe_name>Cold Salmon in Creamy Spiced Sauce</recipe_name>
 	<recipe_author>Hilaire Walden</recipe_author>
	<meal_type>Fish and Shellfish</meal_type>
     </recipe_head>
  	
     <recipe_body>
	  	<ingredients>
	  	  <ingredient>1/2 teaspoon finely crushed cumin seeds</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>1 teaspoon chilli powder</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>salt and freshly ground black pepper</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>2 tablespoons olive oil</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>2 cloves garlic, crushed</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>1.25 cm (1/2 in) fresh ginger root, finely chopped</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>4 pieces salmon fillet, skinned</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>125 ml (4 fl oz / 1/2 cup) double (heavy) cream</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>250 ml (8 fl oz / 1 cup) thick plain yogurt</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>large pinch of saffron threads, toasted and crushed</ingredient>
  		  <ingredient>seeds from 6 cardamom pods, toasted and finely crushed</ingredient>
	  	  <ingredient>salt</ingredient>
  		  <ingredient>coriander (cilantro) to garnish</ingredient>
	  	</ingredients>
  	<directions>
	  <direction>Mix together the cumin seeds, chilli powder and pepper and rub into the fish.</direction>
	<direction>Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the garlic and ginger and heat until they sizzle.</direction>
	<direction>Add the salmon fillets and fry until they start to colour (about 15-20 seconds on each side).</direction>
	<direction>Stir in the cream, yogurt, saffron, cardamom and salt.</direction>
	<direction>Adjust the heat so that the sauce is just bubbling and cook, 
 turning the fish once, until the flesh just flakes when tested 
 with the point of a sharp knife (about 3-4 minutes each side).
        </direction>
	<direction>Transfer the fish to a shallow dish. 
 Boil the sauce until it has reduced and thickened, pour over the fish and leave to cool.</direction>
        <direction>Cover the dish and chill until 15-20 minutes before serving.</direction>
	<direction>Garnish with coriander (cilantro).</direction>
	</directions>
     </recipe_body>

     <recipe_footer>
     <serving>4</serving>
     <preparation_time>15 minutes</preparation_time>
     </recipe_footer>
     <document_info>
  		<document_author>Hilaire Walden</document_author>
  		<date_updated>21/01/07</date_updated>
  		<origin>Easy to Cook, Hot &amp; Spicy</origin>
  	</document_info>
  </recipe>

XSLT (not complete)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

 <xsl:output
   method="xml"
   doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
   doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
   indent="yes"
   encoding="iso-8859-1" />

  <xsl:template match="recipe">
   <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 
    <head> 
      <title> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> </title>
      <link href="cooking-html.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>
    </head>
    <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
     <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </body>
   </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="recipe_head">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="recipe_body">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="recipe_name">
   <h1 align="center"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </h1>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="recipe_author">
   <p align="center"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </p>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="meal_type">
   <p align="center"> Type: <xsl:apply-templates/> </p>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ingredients">
   <h2 align="center">Ingredients</h2>
   <ol>
     <xsl:apply-templates/> 
   </ol>
   </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ingredient">
   <li> <xsl:apply-templates/> </li>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="directions">
   <h2 align="center">Directions</h2>
   <ol>
     <xsl:apply-templates/> 
   </ol>
   </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="direction">
   <li> <xsl:apply-templates/> </li>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="recipe_footer">
   <h2 align="center">More info</h2>
    <p>This stylesheet is unfinished ... some rules are missing.
      This is why you can't see properly formatted contents below .... 
    </p>
   <xsl:apply-templates/>
   </xsl:template>

 </xsl:stylesheet>

Last advice

Ignore textbooks that start by explaining how to use the for-each construct.
You can do a lot just with templates (rules) !
Try to complete the example problem above. In my experience, people absolutly don't get the mechanism of this kind of data-driven rule-based programming before they really tried understanding and completing an example. (This includes programmers that only have been trained in procedural languages. Btw, those programmers really freak out when they have to learn writing functional programming code with XSLT and cope with the fact that there no variables as they understand them in XSLT).
Learn how to use an XSLT debugger / tracing program. E.g. use the Exchanger XML Editor, version 3.3 or better, which includes a debugger. This editor works fine on Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.x, but not as well on Mac OsX it seems.
Look up other tutorials, some are listed in the XSLT article.
An excellent reference guide can be found on ZVON: "http://zvon.org/comp/r/ref-XSLT_1.html" and "http://zvon.org/comp/r/ref-XSLT_2.html"

XSLT Tutorial - Basics

Introduction

Introduction Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations

History and specifications

A first glance at XSLT

Root of an XSLT file stylesheet

Association of XML and an XSLT file

Basic XSLT

A complete XSLT example

Anatomy of a simple stylesheet

Rule execution order

More information

The procedure recapitulated

Tuning output with xsl:output and CSS

Output declarations

CSS styling of HTHML

If things go wrong

Frequent problems and remediation

The XSLT default rule

A modified default rule that will help you find missing pieces

Selective processing

Steering rule execution and information filtering

A short glance at Xpath

Basic value extraction

The xsl:value-of instruction

Inserting a value inside a string

HTML Links

Dealing with pictures

Sorting

Exercise

Last advice

Navigation menu

Slow Search