Rating:  - Essential Reference for XSLT Applications
What an incredible resource this book is! I am using XSLT to transform XML data into flat files that are delivered to a legacy DOS application, so the chapters on text and string manipulation were extremely helpful. In addition, the author has illustrated examples that covered almost every road-block that I ran into while developing XSLT files. I also like the approach in illustrating generically useful examples for applications in general, not just web applications. An assential resource for anyone wanting to implement XSLT in a hurry.
Rating: - Great reference for XSLT solutions
The XSLT Cookbook offers more than one hundred code solutions to common XSLT problems. The covered topics range from string operations, handling dates and numbers to converting xml to various formats, like text, HTML or SVG.
The author also included some speciality solutions for working with Visio and Excel documents or generating XTM Topic Maps. The last chapters of the book cover some more advanced topic, like extending XSLT and testing stylesheets.
As it is a Cookbook, the beef of this book are the code examples. All examples I tested so far are of outstanding quality and work great. For the most problems you will encounter when writing stylesheets, this book offers an example. Just look it up and you are there.
The very high quality of this book and it's code examples is impressive. The author Sal Mangano sure put a lot of work and research into this book. And the expertise of Jeni Tennison, as technical reviewer, and Simon St.Laurent, as editor, sure were an important factor in achieving this quality standard.
If you are an absolute beginner, you probably should start with a more tutorial style book, but as soon as you have some basic knowledge of XSLT, this book is a great reference for XSLT solutions.
Rating: - Pleasing and not patronizing
What pleases me so much about this book, and it really does please me, is that Sal Mangano writes fantastic, well thought out templates for use in your XSLT stylesheets, and tells you what makes them so wonderful. Even more importantly, he's willing to show you alternatives to the solution he provides and explain why they're not optimal.
This book is like a computer science class taught in XLST, and while not the most thrilling subject in the world, it's certainly well-planned, well-executed, and well worth having on your bookshelf.
Rating:  - Excellent Examples but Limited Use for Beginners
Summary: Excellent Examples but Limited Use for Beginners
I'm half-way through the "XSLT Cookbook" and I must say I like this author's style. Compared to my level, Sal Mangano is a master at writing style-sheets; however, I never feel as though he is writing down to me. While most of the book is composed of cut-and-dry material, Mr. Mangano also provides just enough (but no more) interesting and slightly humorous ideas to prevent distraction.
The examples are pretty useful on their own for the programmer who is just learning the language), and they also prompted some stimulating ideas for my own projects. I especially find the chapters "Extending and Embedding XSLT" and "XML to XML" helpful (although the example in section 12.6 seems incomplete with no include statements). I would have preferred a little more details on embedding Saxon in Java, but the references provided (and the sample chapter of "Java and XSLT" from O'Reilly's web site) more than enough details to get me started.
Even though there are several highlights of the book, the solutions presented are a little hard to figure out (since, as a beginner, I don't yet read the Extensible Style sheet Language fluently) so a second book or tutorial is recommended for those who are generally unfamiliar with or unconfident using XSLT and XPath. The second edition should definitely have a **brief** reference or tutorial for 'us' beginners. In chapter two, he also mentions discussing trig functions, but Mr. Mangano only gives one sentence and no examples for their XSLT solutions. Although I can guess at their implementation (using a series that I constantly use in my Complex Analysis class), I wish the author would still have included such an example.
Despite these flaws, I highly recommend Sal Mangano's manuscript as an addition for anyone who is learning XSLT or just wants a quick solution to a common problem.
Rating: - Good XSLT reference for non-beginners
The book is an excellent practical hands-on reference for
creating solutions in the XML-XSL Transformation domain.
It covers areas from simple string operations to SVG generation
to extending XSLT with Perl, JavaScript and Java.
The author Sal Mangano has good working examples with detailed
descriptions of the code. This makes experimenting with new
code relatively painless.
Being an experienced XSLT developer I found the book easy to
follow. However people new to the concept of XML transformations
would do well to get a basic understanding of the matter before
diving into building solutions using this book.
Having a copy of the XSLT Cookbook during the development
phase of the LCRA.org website project would have reduced the
time needed to craft a good sustainable solution, and reduced
the amount of code I had to redesign to be modular and flexible.
An example is the recommendation : "Prefer 'selecting' and
'matching' over 'filtering'" pg 114, para 3. This allows for
flexible XML schemas.
A companion CD with working example code and a searchable
text of the book on the CD would have been appreciated.
The website at Oreilly does have a downloadable zip file
of the examples.
All in all well worth the $40.00 price of the book,
Neeraj
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