This post shows you how to convert a simple XML file to CSV using XSLT.
Consider the following sample XML:
<library>
<book>
<author>Dan Simmons</author>
<title>Hyperion</title>
<publishDate>1989</publishDate>
</book>
<book>
<author>Douglas Adams</author>
<title>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</title>
<publishDate>1979</publishDate>
</book>
</library>This is the desired CSV output:
author,title,publishDate Dan Simmons,Hyperion,1989 Douglas Adams,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,1979
The following XSL Style Sheet (compatible with XSLT 1.0) can be used to transform the XML into CSV. It is quite generic and can easily be configured to handle different xml elements by changing the list of fields defined ar the beginning.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text" />
<xsl:variable name="delimiter" select="','" />
<!-- define an array containing the fields we are interested in -->
<xsl:variable name="fieldArray">
<field>author</field>
<field>title</field>
<field>publishDate</field>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:param name="fields" select="document('')/*/xsl:variable[@name='fieldArray']/*" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<!-- output the header row -->
<xsl:for-each select="$fields">
<xsl:if test="position() != 1">
<xsl:value-of select="$delimiter"/>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:value-of select="." />
</xsl:for-each>
<!-- output newline -->
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
<xsl:apply-templates select="library/book"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="book">
<xsl:variable name="currNode" select="." />
<!-- output the data row -->
<!-- loop over the field names and find the value of each one in the xml -->
<xsl:for-each select="$fields">
<xsl:if test="position() != 1">
<xsl:value-of select="$delimiter"/>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:value-of select="$currNode/*[name() = current()]" />
</xsl:for-each>
<!-- output newline -->
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>Let’s try it out:
$ xsltproc xml2csv.xsl books.xml author,title,publishDate Dan Simmons,Hyperion,1989 Douglas Adams,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,1979
| Reference: | Converting XML to CSV using XSLT 1.0 from our JCG partner Fahd Shariff at the fahd.blog blog. |
Hi,
I am new to XML and XSLT, I don’t know where to run this. Can you pls help?