How to convert XML to XSL-FO

Question

I have created an XML file to convert that into a XSL-Formatting Objects. My XML file contains " list " as an root element and " com.ecom " as a repeated element to get populated many number of times.

My XML file look like below format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<list>
<com.ecom>
    <name>test123</name>
    <countryCode>IND</countryCode>
    <logo>test.jpg</logo>
    <personal>
        <com.ecom.personal>
            <details>abcd</details> 
            <hours>12:00IST</hours>
        </com.ecom.personal>
    </personal>
</com.ecom>
<com.ecom>
    <name>test123</name>
    <countryCode>IND</countryCode>
    <logo>test.jpg</logo>
    <personal>
        <com.ecom.personal>
            <details>abcd</details> 
            <hours>1:00PM</hours>
        </com.ecom.personal>
    </personal>
</com.ecom>
<com.ecom>
    <name>test123</name>
    <countryCode>IND</countryCode>
    <logo>test.jpg</logo>
    <personal>
        <com.ecom.personal>
            <details>abcd</details> 
            <hours>10:00AM</hours>
            <url>
                <url-name>http://www.sample.com</url-name>
            </url>
        </com.ecom.personal>
    </personal>
</com.ecom>
<com.ecom>
    <name>test123</name>
    <countryCode>IND</countryCode>
    <logo>test.jpg</logo>
    <personal>
        <com.ecom.personal>
            <details>abcd</details> 
            <hours>2:00PM</hours>
        </com.ecom.personal>
    </personal>
</com.ecom>
</list>

I wanted to convert this XML file into an XSL-FO format. Please help me out...

Answer 1

The most common way would be to use XSLT to transform your XML into the XSL-FO vocabulary. Searching StackExchange for questions with the 'xsl-fo' tag will find you multiple examples (some better than others) of some XML plus the XSLT stylesheet for transforming that XML into XSL-FO. You could mine those for solutions to parts of your problem and/or you could look at some of the references available on the web.

Tutorials and examples:

• "Developing XSL-FO Stylesheets", Antenna House, http://www.antennahouse.com/antenna1/xml-to-xsl-fo-stylesheets/
• "Comprehensive XSL-FO Tutorials and Samples Collection", Antenna House, http://www.antennahouse.com/antenna1/comprehensive-xsl-fo-tutorials-and-samples-collection/
• "XSLT and XSL-FO Toolbox of Tips and Tricks", Antenna House, http://www.mentea.net/resources/tips-and-tricks.pdf
• "Overview of XSL-FO", data2type, http://www.data2type.de/en/xml-xslt-xslfo/xsl-fo/#c108
• "Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO", Crane Softwrights, http://www.cranesoftwrights.com/training/index.htm#pfux
• "XSL Formatting Objects Tutorial", RenderX, http://www.renderx.com/tutorial.html
• "XSL-FO Tutorial", Ecrion, http://www.ecrion.com/help/products/xfrenderingserver/xfultrascalehelp3/xsl_fo_tutorial.htm
• Ibex PDF Creator documentation, Ibex, http://xmlpdf.com/documentation.html There are some tutorials, eg, for tables and headers/footers, amongst the Ibex-specific pages

XSL-FO quick references

• "Mapping of elements to the permitted properties", Dave Pawson, http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect3/els2prop.html
• "XSL-FO Shorthands, from 1.1 spec", Dave Pawson, http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect3/shorthands.html
• "Properties and the FOs they apply to", Dave Pawson, http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect3/prop2els.html
• "XSL 1.1 Properties", Mentea, http://www.mentea.net/resources/xsl11-properties.pdf