Apache Cocoon and XSLT
I used to dream in XSLT if you can believe it. The largest web site I’ve built to date was built on Apache Cocoon. It’s an XML framework that lets you route incoming HTTP request through pipelines that generate XML, run through various XSLT transformations, and then serialize the output as HTML, PDF, or whatever. It’s a framework I occasionally wish I had time to get back into.
Brad and I have discussed using it in future versions of BlueInk. There are some newer XML technologies, though, that also look appealing, but there’s more research to be done on their stability and library availability for PHP. The one that interests me most is XQuery. It’s similar to XSLT, in that it transforms XML into something else, but because it’s a query language, it can munch data in fewer lines than XSLT and create non-XML-based results. I haven’t done enough research to be able to show you a use case yet, but hopefully once I move out the XQuery neophyte stage (whenever I find that time) I’ll post some code samples.
How are you using XML, XSLT, or XQuery?