Question

I like .NET webcontrols and you manipulate things, that’s common consensus, but XML and XSL is so great, because you have UI logic that is platform & language-independent, so one day I change the app to php, java or whatever and i can reuse all the presentation logic. Moreover, XSL has the possibility to call .NET (or whatever) methods before rendering.

When do you use XML/XSL normally? why no to use it more frequently?

Answer 1

Instead of HTML?

I use it constantly in place of asp.net controls since it affords the separation of concerns for the V and the C in 2.0 that you don’t get in .NET 2.0 out of the box.

Obviously there’s a million other uses unrelated to asp.net controls.

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Edit: a sketch of an implementation

public class xsltmanager {     /* constructor (singleton) which defines a file watcher for *.xsl in the path of your choice */      //just a mutex for thread safety     private object Mutex = new object();      //caching XslCompiledTransforms     private Dictionary<string, XslCompiledTransform> cTransforms = new Dictionary<string, XslCompiledTransform>();      public XslCompiledTransform fetch(string identifier)     {                if (!this.cTransforms.ContainsKey(identifier))         {             lock (this.Mutex)             {                 if (!this.cTransforms.ContainsKey(identifier))                 {                     XslCompiledTransform xslDoc = new XslCompiledTransform();                     xslDoc.Load(/* file path based on identifier */);                      this.cTransforms.Add(identifier, xslDoc);                 }             }         }         return this.cTransforms[identifier];     }      /* other util xslt methods - namespace wash, doc merge, whatever */ }  public class myPage : System.Web.UI.Page {     protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         //get source data         XPathDocument xPathDoc = myGetXMLMethod();          //transform params         XsltArgumentList oArgs = new XsltArgumentList();          /* add params as required */          //fetching and executing the transform directly to the Response here         xsltmanager.instance.get(@'foo\bar\baz').Transform(xPathDoc, oArgs, Response.OutputStream);     } }