API Output Styling

Question

I hate to ask but I've searched all over the internet trying to figure this out.

So I get the API to pull info from Education.com site. I got all the school info, location info, etc. But how do I style it?!

I want to make a nice looking table, the output is like this:

<params>
 <param>
  <value>
   <array>
   <data>
<value>
 <struct>
  <member>
   <name>school</name>
   <value>
    <struct>
     <member>
      <name>schoolid</name>
      <value>
       <string>17914</string>
      </value>
     </member>
     <member>
      <name>schoolname</name>
      <value>
       <string>Fair Oaks Community High School</string>
      </value>
     </member>

Would I just use CSS or am I forgetting a step? I'm sorry for my ignorance.

Sincerely, Carl

Answer 1

Although you can certainly write your own XML parser to build an HTML table the way you like it, this is one of the many things that XSLT is good for. Some examples:

• on AltaFHusssein (now renders cleanly in Chrome)
• on WROX (old, but looks perfectly fine for what you're doing)

Answer 2

This is a perfect use for XSLT. You can iterate over the elements in that XML and output it right into HTML.

This article details the needed steps pretty well. http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/xsl.html