Question

Is there a way to do in Silverlight what XslCompiledTransform does in full .NET?
The System.Xml.Xsl namespace is obviously not complete in SL.

Answer 1

The simplistic answer is: no. Its also difficult to conceive a reason why you would want to but I’m sure you must have one.

If you really do need to use existing XSL tranforms on XML and your silverlight app is designed to run in-browser then you can enlist the host browsers help in performing a transform.

For example, for IE you can use:-

 HtmlPage.Window.Eval(@ "function transform(xml, xsl)
 {
     var xmlDOM = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.3.0");
     xmlDOM.LoadXML(xml);
     var xslDOM = new ActiveObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.3.0");
     xslDOM.LoadXML(xsl);

     return xmlDOM.transformNode(xslDOM);
 }");

Now given two strings, the xml and the xsl you use:-

 string result = HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("transform", xmlString, xslString) as string;

Of course to make this cross browser you will need to detect the browser and inject the correct code to the transform function. Some browsers will make you jump through more hoops than others but it can be done.