Do you have XML data that you need formatted in HTML or PDF format (or both)?
Do you have a document where alternating pages (left/right or front/back) have a slightly different format?
What about a document that has a fixed header/footer on each page and the middle is where your text goes?
Do you want a little more flexibility in formatting PDFs than SSRS gives you?
For this lunch and learn we will explore the following:
XSL basics
What are Formatting Objects in XSL-FO
Using XSL-FO in .Net to transform XML data into a PDF
Beginners Guide to TikTok for Search - Rachel Pearson - We are Tilt __ Bright...
Make Your Data Pretty With XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language)
1. Make Your Data Pretty with
XSL-FO
Extensible Stylesheet LanguageFormatting Objects
2. What We Will Cover
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What is XSL-FO?
Different formatting engines
Introduction to XSL
Introduction to FO
Examples of using FO to create a PDF
Examples of using FO including XSL/XML to create a PDF
Example of using NFop in C# to create a PDF
Why our project switch from SSRS to XSL-FO
3. What is XSL-FO?
XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language)
A language written to provide formatting for XML
documents.
FO (Formatting Objects)
Containers of content that preserve structure and associate
presentational information.
What do you use it for?
XSL-FO is a markup language for XML document
formatting which is most often used to generate PDFs.
4. What is XSL-FO?
The XSL-FO language was designed for paged media.
FO works best for what could be called "content-driven" design.
This is the standard method of layout for books, articles, legal
documents, and so forth. It involves a single flowing span of
fairly contiguous text, with various repeating information built into
the margins of a page. This is as opposed to "layout-driven"
design, which is used in newspapers or magazines. If content in
those documents does not fit in the required space, some of it is
trimmed away until it does fit. XSL-FO does not easily handle the
tight restrictions of magazine layout; indeed, in many cases, it
lacks the ability to express some forms of said layout.
5. How XSL-FO Works
XML Document
XSLT Document
XSLT
Engine
FO Document
FO Engine
PDF Document
1. XML document and XSLT
document are fed into an
XSLT engine.
2. Using the rules in the
XSLT document, the XSLT
engine tranforms the XML
into a FO Document.
3. The FO document is fed
into the FO engine.
4. The FO engine uses rules
in the FO document to
render the PDF.
6. What can XSL-FO do?
• Multiple columns
• Lists - XSL-FO handles the numbering
• Pagination controls - widows and orphans of text and what is
kept together on a page
• Footnotes
• Tables - much like HTML
• Text orientation - different languages have different text
orientations
• Page numbers - XSL-FO handles the numbering
• Include images
• Indexing - XSL-FO 1.1 supports creation of an index
• Flows - XSL-FO 1.1 supports more than 1 flow
7. Advantages
XML language – Because it is an XML language, only an XSLT transform
(and an XSLT processor) is required to generate XSL-FO code from any
XML language.
Ease of use – Another advantage of XSL-FO is the relative ease of use.
Much of the functionality of the language is based on work from CSS.
Low cost – Compared with commercial typesetting and page layout
products, XSL-FO can offer a much lower cost solution. The initial cost of
ownership is low (zero if the free implementations, such as Apache FOP,
meet your requirements), especially compared to the cost of commercial
composition tools.
Multi-lingual – XSL-FO has been designed to work for all written human
languages.
Mature standard – With the publication of XSL-FO 1.1, XSL-FO is proving
to be a mature standard with a number of solid commercial and noncommercial implementations.
8. Drawbacks
Limited capabilities – XSL-FO was specifically designed to meet the
requirements of "lightly designed" documents typified by technical
manuals, business documents, invoices, and so on. In particular, XSLFO does not provide a direct way to get formatting effects that depend
on knowing the page position relationship of two formatting objects.
Missing features - there are important layout features that are simply
not in XSL-FO.
Extension dependency – one must consider proprietary extensions
provided by the different XSL-FO implementations. These extensions
add features that are not part of the core specification.
10. Commercial Versions
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Works with .Net
Good documentation and support
Can support things not in the FOP spec
Up to date with the spec
Examples
• Ibex PDF Creator
• AntennaHouse
• RenderX
• ASPOSE
11. Free Versions
Apache.org Project's FOP - http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/
• Good documentation
• Java app - need the open-source IKVM.NET project to run Java
apps on .NET. It is a Java virtual machine (JVM) on top of .NET.
• 'THE' standard in the open source processors
• Always being updated
NFop - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nfop/
• Ported to .Net via J#
• Last update was in 2010
• Easy to use (I'll show examples later)
13. Intro to XSL
XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language)
A language written to provide formatting for XML documents.
XSL consists of two parts:
• A method for transforming XML documents
• A method for formatting XML documents
XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations)
This language takes existing XML documents and transforms them into
other XML documents. For example, change XML into HTML, plain
text or another XML document.
14. XSLT Example
Take a simple XML document:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<name>Brian</name>
An XSLT document:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xsl:version="1.0">
<body>
<p>Hello <xsl:value-of select="name" /></p>
</body>
</html>
15. XSLT Example
<xsl:value-of select="name" /> indicates to replace this tag with the text
at the node "name". "name" is referred to as the XPath expression. An
XPath expression works like navigating a file system; where a forward
slash (/) selects subdirectories.
Output:
<html xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xsl:version="1.0">
<body>
<p>Hello Brian</p>
</body>
</html>
18. XSLT Example 2
The <xsl:template> element contains rules to apply when a specified node is matched. match="/"
defines the whole document.
<xsl:for-each select="root/person"> indicates a loop and to do what is between the <xsl:for-each> tags
for each instance of what is selected.
output:
<html><body>
||
|<p>Hello Brian</p>|
||
|<p>Hello Michelle</p>|
</body></html>
19. XSLT if Test Example
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="html" indent="yes" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" />
<xsl:template match="/">
|<html><body>|
||
|<xsl:for-each select="root/person">|
|<xsl:if test="root/person/fname = 'Brian' ">|
|
|
|<p>Hello <xsl:value-of select="fname"/></p>|
|</xsl:if>|
|</xsl:for-each>|
20. XSLT if Test Example
<xsl:if test="root/person/name = 'Brian' "> is an if statement. if the condition is true you
can continue, otherwise you skip to the </xsl:if>
output:
<html><body>
||
|<p>Hello Brian</p>|
</body></html>
21. Some Other XSL Functions
Functions on numeric values: abs, ceiling, floor, round, format-number
|<xsl:value-of select="round(Total)" />|
|<Total>123456.7</Total>|
|<xsl:value-of select="format-number(Total, '###,##0.00')" />|
|123,456.70|
functions on strings: compare, concat, substring, upper-case, lower-case, replace
|<xsl:value-of select="concat(fname,lname)" />|
23. Document Layout
The page is divided into regions.
region-before
region
start
region-body
region-after
region
end
24. Documents Parts
An XSL-FO document is divided into two main parts:
• One layout master set (layout-master-set), which specifies one or
more page master templates (simple-page-master) to be used in the
document.
• One or more page sequences, which contain the content of the
document.
25. Documents Parts
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
<fo:layout-master-set>
<fo:simple-page-master master-name="hello"> <!--name of page is "hello"-->
<!-- Page template goes here - define your regions-->
</fo:simple-page-master>
</fo:layout-master-set>
<fo:page-sequence master-reference="hello"> <!-- matches name of page from above->
<!-- Page content goes here -->
</fo:page-sequence>
</fo:root>
27. Page-Sequence
The layout-master-set FO is followed by one or more page-sequence
FOs, which must reference one of the simple-page-master templates
by name. The page-sequence FOs contain the contents of the page or
pages.
<fo:page-sequence master-reference="hello">
<!--Page contents-->
</fo:page-sequence>
Notice that the value of the master-reference attribute matches the
master-name defined in the simple-page-master FO.
28. Flow and Static-Content
The contents of the page inside the page-sequence FO are either
static, meaning they appear the same on each page or flowing,
meaning they flow from one page to the next. Static content is
contained in static-content FOs and flowing content is contained in flow
FOs.
<fo:page-sequence master-reference="hello">
<fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
<!--flowing content-->
</fo:flow>
</fo:page-sequence>
This example only has a flow FO. In most cases, the region-body has
flowing content and the other regions have static content.
29. <fo:block>
The block FO is used for separating and formatting generic blocks,
such as paragraphs, tables or lists. Blocks can be nested.
31. SSRS to XSL-FO
SSRS wasn't able to do what we wanted easily and as precisely.
SSRS made some decisions on placement on it's own. The client has
premade paper forms and needed placement to be exact.
We needed one flow to go top-to-bottom and another flow to go bottomto-top. SSRS couldn't do that.
Here's what we also got out of switching:
• Needed to use custom DLL we created to help with reports. This dll
isn't needed in the new XSL-FO reports.
• 3 RDL files that were very similar (about 90% the same) were
condensed to 1 XSL file that used data from XML file to determine
which sections changed. Now 1 file only needs to be updated and
all 3 reports stay in sync.
