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Transforming from the Command Line

When you are running a transformation from the command line, it makes a lot of sense to use XSLTC. Although the Xalan interpreting transformer contains a command-line mechanism as well, it doesn't save the pre-compiled byte-codes as translets for later use, as XSLTC does.

There are two steps to running XSLTC from the command line:

1. Compile the translet.
2. Run the compiled translet on the data.

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Note: For detailed information on this subject, you can also consult the excellent usage guide at http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/xsltc_usage.html.

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Compiling the Translet

To compile the article3.xsl stylesheet into a translet, execute this command:

java org.apache.xalan.xsltc.cmdline.Compile article3.xsl
 

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Note: For version 1.3 of the Java platform, you'll need to include the appropriate classpath settings, as described in Compiling and Running the Program.

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The result is a class file (the translet) named article3.class.

Here are the arguments that can be specified when compiling a translet:

java org.apache.xalan.xsltc.cmdline.Compile
    -o transletName -d directory -j jarFile
    -p packageName {-u stylesheetURI | stylesheetFile }
 

where:

• -o transletName

  Specifies the name of the generated translet class (the output class).The .class suffix is optional. If not present, it is automatically added to the name specified by the stylesheet argument.

• -d directory

  Specifies the destination directory. (Default is the current working directory.)

• -j jarFile

  Outputs the generated translet class files into a JAR file named jarFile.jar. When this option is used, only the JAR file is created.

• -p packageName

  Specifies a package name for the generated translet classes.

• -u stylesheetURI

  Specifies the stylesheet with a URI such as http://myserver/stylesheet1.xsl.

• stylesheetFile

  (No flag) The pathname of the stylesheet file.

Running the Translet

To run the compiled translet on the sample file article3.xml, execute this command:

java org.apache.xalan.xsltc.cmdline.Transform 
    article3.xml article3
 

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Note: Again set the classpath, as described in Compiling and Running the Program, if you are running on version 1.3 of the Java platform.

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This command adds the current directory to the classpath, so the translet can be found. The output goes to System.out.

Here are the possible arguments that can be specified when running a translet:

java org.apache.xalan.xsltc.cmdline.Transform
    {-u documentURI | documentFilename} 
    className [name=value...]
 

where:

• -u documentURI

  Specifies the XML input document with a URI.

• documentFilename

  Specifies the filename for an XML input document.

• className

  The translet that performs the transformation. (Here, you can't specify the .class suffix, the same way you omit it when running a java application.)

• name=value ...

  Optional set of one or more stylesheet parameters specified as name-value pairs.

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This tutorial contains information on the 1.0 version of the Java Web Services Developer Pack.

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