XSLT doesn't understand me?

vladb has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Thanks for taking your time to hear to my concern.

I've been recently playing with some XSLT for various templating and other reasons. I have also spent some time on the web trying to learn about the beast and also how it is used in Perl. Unfortunately, I couldn't find plenty good information on the use of the XML::XSLT perl module. Not even in the native perldoc! ;/.

Anyhow, could you please explain me what is wrong with this code? This is the real deal and only used for testing purposes while I'm still learning how to use XML::XSLT. So, in this example, I'm first parsing an XML 'string' (saved in a scalar variable), which works just fine. Next, I'm trying to parse an XSL file 'Data/verysimple.xsl' that contains the exact same XSL 'string'. However, this second time the parser reports this error (this is the script's output actually):

XSL string parsed!
Error while parsing: 
not well-formed (invalid token) at line 1, column 4, byte 4 at /Citygu
+ides/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/sun4-solaris/XML/Parser.pm line 
+185

Data/verysimple.xml at /export/home/vlad/scratch/LIB/XML/XSLT.pm line 
+1150.
[download]

Here's the actual code:

use XML::XSLT;

my $simple_xsl = qq~<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet>
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
~;

my $source = new XML::XSLT($simple_xsl);
print "XSL string parsed!\n";

my $source1 = new XML::XSLT('Data/verysimple.xml');

print "XSL file parsed!\n";
[download]

Update: Thanks for all your comments. In fact all of the comments are correct. In this particular instance, I indeed failed to provide proper file name. Nontheless, the module couldn't parse any other xml file (actual deal) that I had to parse. Also, it had very poor error reporting (say, if I made a syntax error in my XML at line 100 or so, it would still continue saying that the error is at line 1 ;/). I've now installed libxml2 and libxsml libraries and also trying to install XML::LibXML and XML::LibXSLT as per your comments. I'm sincerely appreciative of your support! :-)

_____________________

# Under Construction
[download]

Comment on XSLT doesn't understand me? Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: XSLT doesn't understand me? by Matts (Deacon) on Jun 28, 2002 at 10:36 UTC
You don't tell us what's in "Data/verysimple.xml" - that is where the problem is occuring. The file is obviously not XML. But I also can't recommend strongly enough to NOT USE XML::XSLT. Sorry for shouting that, but it needs to be said. This is a very bad module that does not implement XSLT, but a very very small subset of it, and the parts that it does implement are often done wrongly. In short, steer clear, and go for XML::LibXSLT, XML::Sablotron, or XML::Xerces.	[reply]
Re: XSLT doesn't understand me? by newrisedesigns (Curate) on Jun 27, 2002 at 19:35 UTC
I highly doubt this is the problem, but you said "data/verysimple.xsl", and your code has "xml". Does it work if you pass it the string, like so: `my $source1 = new XML::XSLT($simple_xsl);` [download] Hope this helps. John J Reiser newrisedesigns.com	[reply] [d/l]
Re: XSLT doesn't understand me? by lestrrat (Deacon) on Jun 27, 2002 at 19:17 UTC
Update: I need to read the question more closely before answering. ugh ~~Perhaps it requires a XML namespace declaration before using "xsl:" ?~~ In either case, seeing that this module hasn't been updated since the end of last year (according to CPAN), you might want to try XML::LibXML and XML::LibXSLT which are much much more actively maintained.	[reply]
Re: XSLT doesn't understand me? by thraxil (Prior) on Jun 28, 2002 at 14:26 UTC
Matts and newrisedesigns are probably onto the problem. if i run the code snippet on my machine without creating the file 'Data/verysimple.xml', i get exactly the same output as you've shown. this would suggest to me that the file 'Data/verysimple.xml' doesn't exist on your system or isn't readable. anders pearson	[reply]