[Baypiggies] XSLT vs Python for XML manipulation

[Matt Good]

On May 22, 2008, at 6:23 PM, Shannon -jj Behrens wrote:

> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Stephen McInerney
> <spmcinerney at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Can anyone point me to any good articles discussing the merits and
>> limitations of XSLT vs Python (or XSLT into Python) for XML  
>> manipulation?
>>
>> (I inherited an existing flow using XSLT->PERL and I'm trying to  
>> scope how
>> to
>> implement some enhances, what to port, what to reuse. It is  
>> desirable to
>> share
>> as much of the existing codebase with other users if possible;  
>> however
>> clean-coding
>> everything in Python would be cleanest and most compact. It's hard  
>> to make
>> the call.)
>
> Imagine you're an automotive engineer fresh out of college and you go
> to work for Mazda which uses a rotary engine.  XSLT is like a rotary
> engine in that there's nothing else like it.  It's way out in left
> field.
>
> Personally, I like the Genshi templating engine because it's similar
> enough to a normal templating engine, but it's got a bunch of
> XSLT-like tricks up its sleeve.

Yeah, the template language has some similar features, and then  
there's also the Transformer API which provides a programatic API for  
XML munging:

http://genshi.edgewall.org/wiki/ApiDocs/genshi.filters.transform

-- Matt