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Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework

(vgr.land)
116 points vgr-land | 2 comments | 24 Aug 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

A few weeks ago a friend sent me grug-brain XSLT (1) which inspired me to redo my personal blog in XSLT.

Rather than just build my own blog on it, I wrote it up for others to use and I've published it on GitHub https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework (2)

Since others have XSLT on the mind, now seems just as good of a time as any to share it with the world. Evidlo@ did a fine job explaining the "how" xslt works (3)

The short version on how to publish using this framework is:

1. Create a new post in HTML wrapped in the XML headers and footers the framework expects.

2. Tag the post so that its unique and the framework can find it on build

3. Add the post to the posts.xml file

And that's it. No build system to update menus, no RSS file to update (posts.xml is the rss file). As a reusable framework, there are likely bugs lurking in CSS, but otherwise I'm finding it perfectly usable for my needs.

Finally, it'd be a shame if XSLT is removed from the HTML spec (4), I've found it quite eloquent in its simplicity.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393817

(2) https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework

(3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988271

(4) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44952185

(Aside - First time caller long time listener to hn, thanks!)

1. nashashmi ◴[25 Aug 25 02:55 UTC] No.45009761[source]▶
A few HN posts ago I commented this

> I want to see XSL import an XML. I want to see the reverse. XSL will be the view. XML will be the model. And the browser will be the controller. MVC paradigm.

It then dawned on me that the MVC framework for XML is where XML is the model (or data or database table). And XSLT is the viewer in the rear. Meaning the web browser can browse database information.

I never appreciated this very much before. The web has this incredible format to see database information in raw form or a styled form.

I still want to see development of it in reverse, and I hope to find better use cases now that I understand this paradigm.

replies(1): >>45012695 #
2. supermatt ◴[25 Aug 25 11:29 UTC] No.45012695[source]▶
It would not make sense to start from an XSLT. An XSLT is only a set of transformation rules (a transformation stylesheet). If there is nothing to transform, then the stylesheet produces nothing.

But you can kind of achieve what you want by treating the initial XML as a "view definition/configuration", and the referenced XSLT as a "view builder", and referencing your "model" as an external document via XPath document and applying to the XSLT template(s). i.e. you create configurations of your view that apply external data.