ASP.NET WebForms + XSLT Transformation
Workflow
- The C# backend fetches XML string (student data) from the database
- Load the XML string into
MemoryStreamand create anXPathDocument - Read the
student.xslstylesheet from the physical path within the project - Perform XSLT transformation with
XslCompiledTransformto output an HTML string - Pass the generated HTML to the frontend page for rendering (you can implement this yourself. XSL is not limited to web scenarios; it can also serve as a template engine)
Prepare your full‑format XML on your own
student.xsl File
Place this file inside your project
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<!-- Set output to HTML with UTF‑8 encoding to fix Chinese garbled characters -->
<xsl:output method="html" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8"/>
<title>Student List</title>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
<!-- Path matches XML structure: Root → StudentDB → Student -->
<xsl:for-each select="StudentDB/Student">
<li>
No：<xsl:value-of select="position()"/>
Name：<xsl:value-of select="Name"/>
</li>
</xsl:for-each>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)C# Transformation Code
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml.XPath;
using System.Xml.Xsl;
namespace XslDemo.Web
{
public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected string studentHtml = string.Empty;
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack)
{
//1. Get XML string returned from database via BLL layer
string xml = new BLL.student().GetAllListXml();
byte[] arr = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);
using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(arr))
{
XPathDocument xpd = new XPathDocument(stream);
string xslPath = Context.Server.MapPath("/student.xsl");
// Check whether the XSL file exists
if (!File.Exists(xslPath))
{
studentHtml = "XSL stylesheet file not found!";
return;
}
XslCompiledTransform tran = new XslCompiledTransform();
tran.Load(xslPath);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
tran.Transform(xpd, null, new StringWriter(sb));
// 【Critical】Assign result to page variable
studentHtml = sb.ToString();
}
}
}
}
}Code language: C# (cs)Use placeholder replacement if you want output rendered in aspx page
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="XslDemo.Web.Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<%--Output HTML generated from XSLT transformation--%>
<%=studentHtml %>
</body>
</html>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)Server‑side transformation
Previous: XPath