Article:		XSLT Reflection
Subject:		Real Reflection ?
Date:		2005-01-17 12:00:15
From:		mnl05
Response to: Real Reflection ?
I had a question regarding xsl revision. Once we dynamically generate xsl file and deploy it on cliet site, client might do some additional but restricted changes such as add few lines of text in between. In next phase, we might also do some changes in the xsl and now the challenge is to incorporate the changes the client has done in the previous version of xsl into new file we are going to deploy in this next phase. I would really appreciate the suggestion as to what would be the right approach. Best regards, mnl05

Previous Message

Up

Next Message

• Real Reflection ?
  2005-01-18 07:03:49 Jirka Kosek [Reply]
  
  You can do this if you make your stylesheets modular. In every place where user is expected to insert something place call for named template (xsl:call-template). This template will be empty by default.

  
  Then deploy your stylesheet as two files -- main stylesheet and driver that will just import main stylesheet. Users will use driver stylesheet and once they want to modify something they can redefine appropriate named template in driver file.

  
  Such way in a future you will just distribute main stylesheet after changes because all customizations will be stored in the driver file.

  
  If you want more straightforward solution you can try to fiddle with tools like XmlDiff to propagate changes from user back to metadata that were used to create stylesheet dynamically.