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XSLT Cookbook Review by Brian C. Lanham
Good Reference along with Introductory Info
I had worked with XSLT for some time when I purchased this book. I needed something to help me move to the next level. This book provided a lot of help to improve XSLT scripts I wrote. The book is relatively large compared to other cookbooks I've used (over 700 pages) which means it is full of good recipes.
I expected this book to be a cookbook and, as such, have solutions to common problems. It definitely offers that. It has a good structure that includes recipes for discrete problems such as string and date/time manipulation. It also has recipes for advanced composite scenarios such as XML to SVG, code generation, and extending XSLT.
One of my favorite aspects of this book is that it provides some foundational, introductory information as well. It's not *just* a cookbook. There is a chapter dedicated to XPath as well as chapters on Testing, Debugging, and Functional Programming. This is excellent for those who both want to advance their skills from beginner or from intermediate.
I think XSLT is an often overlooked yet powerful tool and I rely on this book to help me with XSLT generation. It has been useful in many scenarios such as customizing SharePoint data views, converting XML data to XHTML for display, modifying 3rd-party-generated XML for saving and restoring in custom situations, and for streamlining data storage. And this book has helped me with all of that.