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XSLT – Native, zero-config build system for the Web

(github.com)
392 points _kush | 1 comments | 27 Jun 25 05:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.424s | source
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xg15 ◴[27 Jun 25 08:57 UTC] No.44395101[source]▶
I remember Blizzard actually using this concept for their battle.net site like, 10 years ago. I found it always really cool, but at some point I think they replaced it with a "regular" SPA stack.

I think one big problem with popularizing that approach is that XSLT as a language frankly sucks. As an architecture component, it's absolutely the right idea, but as long as actually developing in it is a world of pain, I don't see how people would have any incentive to adopt it.

The tragic thing is that there are other pure-functional XML transformation languages that are really well-designed - like XQuery. But there is no browser that supports those.

replies(1): >>44397320 #
1. mdaniel ◴[27 Jun 25 15:02 UTC] No.44397320[source]▶
> like XQuery

My favorite thing about XQuery is that it supports logically named functions, not just templates that happen to work upon whatever one provides it as with XSLT. I think golang's text/template suffers from the same problem - good luck being disciplined enough to always give it the right context, or you get bad outcomes

An example I had lying around:

  declare function local:find-outline-num( $from as element(), $num as xs:integer ) as element()* {
    for $el in $from/following-sibling::h:div[@class=concat('outline-', $num)]/*[local-name()=concat('h', $num)]
    return $el
  };