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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T11:56:19+00:00

I have an XML catalog data and an XSL file to visualize this catalog

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I have an XML catalog data and an XSL file to visualize this catalog data. I use this line to validate XML.

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="presentation-list-catalog.xsl"?>

This part works great.

I’d like to have a secret link for designers, or somehow I need to validate XML using another XSL file. Basically I need to only change the link to the XSL file:

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="download-links-catalog.xsl"?>

This XSL file is another visualisation of the XML catalog data so that designers will be able to download hi-res catalog pictures. For this purpose, I would like to use the same XML, but converted using another custom XSL file.

Is it possible to specify a custom XSL file using an HTTP request like:

http://example.com/catalog.xml?download-links-catalog.xsl

What are the possible solutions?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you’re using PHP, one solution is the following:

    Have catalog.xml point to a PHP file that serves up the correct XSL file based on the referral URL.

    You can port this idea to other server-side scripts, such as Ruby, ASP, JSP, etc.

    catalog.xml

    In catalog.xml, instead of pointing to an XSL file, point to a PHP file. In this example, the PHP file is catalog.php.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="catalog.php"?>
<catalog>
  <cd>
    <title>Empire Burlesque</title>
    <artist>Bob Dylan</artist>
    <country>USA</country>
    <company>Columbia</company>
    <price>10.90</price>
    <year>1985</year>
  </cd>
</catalog>

    catalog.php

    catalog.php serves up the correct XSL file based upon the referral URL.

    <?php
// Output the correct Content-Type, so that browsers know 
// to treat this file as an XSL document
header("Content-Type: text/xsl; charset=utf-8");

// Example $referer: http://example.com/catalog.xml?download-links-catalog.xsl
$referer = parse_url($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);

// Example $query: download-links-catalog.xsl
$query = $referer['query'];

// If the file exists, serve up $query.
// If not, serve up the default presentation-list-catalog.xsl.
$xslFile = file_exists($query) ? $query : "presentation-list-catalog.xsl";
echo file_get_contents($xslFile);
?>

    For brevity, this example doesn’t include some security checks. For example, you should validate that $query is in actuality an XSL file. If this check isn’t made, then hackers could access arbitrary files on your server.

    presentation-list-catalog.xsl

    There’s nothing strange about this XSL file. Note that the text within the h2 tags is Presentation List Catalog.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <body>
  <h2>Presentation List Catalog</h2>
  <table border="1">
    <tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
      <th>Title</th>
      <th>Artist</th>
    </tr>
    <xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">
    <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
    </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </table>
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

    download-links-catalog.xsl

    This XSL file is the same as presentation-list-catalog.xsl except that the text within the h2 tags is Download Links Catalog.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <body>
  <h2>Download Links Catalog</h2>
  <table border="1">
    <tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
      <th>Title</th>
      <th>Artist</th>
    </tr>
    <xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">
    <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
    </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </table>
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

    What to Expect

    Using the above setup, navigating to http://example.com/catalog.xml
    will serve up catalog.xml using presentation-list-catalog.xsl.

    Navigating to http://example.com/catalog.xml?download-links-catalog.xsl
    will serve up catalog.xml using download-links-catalog.xsl.

    The example XML and XSL files above were taken from W3Schools’s article on “XSLT – Transformation.”

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