XML - Formatting confusion

[steele_uk]

Hello,

I have a program that i can automate to produce an xml report each morning.

Staff would like the information contained in the page viewable as a webpage.

To make any sense of the XML i have followed a guide and created an XSL page. I undertsand that if the XML page contains a reference to the XSL page then the page can be rendered correctly.

The formatting will never change so the XSL can stay static.

I have done all this and it works great i have a page displaying the XML nicely on a webpage. But how do i get each new, daily generated XML page to know that it has to reference the XSL page? I would like this to be autmated if possible. Is there a way of injecting the reference?

Am i going about this the wrong way round?

TIA

[powdarrmonkey]

No, you're going about it the right way. What you haven't said is how the XML gets generated...

[steele_uk]

The program is a behaviour recording system. It can generate a file, such as the shortened one i have attached. I can create an xsl file that can produce a table and separate the headings into columns, but i am not sure how to make all newly produced files,- link to the xsl file.

[powdarrmonkey]

I'd obfuscate that file a bit more thoroughly.

You either need to have your stylesheet link embedded by whatever generates the XML, or do it yourself later on, either by hand or automated.

[steele_uk]

All the names have been chnaged to protect the guilty!

I am trying to find how to automate the referencing/ embedding of the xsl file.

Any ideas?

[lightinthedark]

Assuming you're on a linux system, try a cron job running something like

sed -e 's/^<(.*?)>/<\1><?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="mystyle.xsl"?>/' inputFileName > outputFileName

... or something on the generated file.
That should use sed to parse the file named inputFileName, find a match to the regex, and replace it with something else, then store that processed file in outputFileName.

The quoted bit breaks down as:
s - Search and replace
/^<(.*?)> - find me the start of the file (^), then a <, then stuff until a >
/<\1><?xml.....?> - replace it with < then the stuff you found before, then >, then <?xml...?> (your stylesheet reference).

I've not tested this and verified the exact syntax, but I'd expect something in that direction to do the job.

... of course if you're on a Windoze server you'll not have the same tools, so I can't help you there. Good luck.

Hello
:-Dave