Editing XSLT (section)

{{short description|Language for transforming XML documents}}
{{Infobox programming language
| name = XSLT
| logo = 
| logo caption = 
| screenshot = 
| screenshot caption = 
| file ext = .xslt
| paradigm = [[Declarative programming|Declarative]]
| scope = 
| year = 1998
| designer = 
| developer = [[World Wide Web Consortium]] (W3C)
| latest release version = 3.0
| latest release date = {{release date and age|2017|6|8}}
| latest preview date = <!-- {{start date and age|2014|10|2}} -->
| typing = 
| implementations = [[libxslt]], [[Saxon XSLT|Saxon]], [[Xalan]]
| influenced by = [[DSSSL]]
| influenced = 
| programming language = 
| platform = 
| operating system = 
| license = 
| website = {{URL|https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/}}
| wikibooks = 
}}
{{Infobox file format
| name = XSLT
| icon = 
| extension = <code>.xslt</code>
| mime = application/xslt+xml
| uniform type = org.w3.xsl
| owner = 
| genre =
| url = 
| containerfor = 
| containedby = 
| extendedfrom =
| extendedto =
}}
'''XSLT''' ('''Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations''') is a language originally designed for [[XML transformation language|transforming]] [[XML]] documents into other XML documents,<ref name="Transformation">{{cite web|url=http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/transformation |title=Transformation|date=2012-09-19}}</ref> or other formats such as [[HTML]] for [[web page]]s, [[plain text]], or [[XSL Formatting Objects]]. These formats can be subsequently converted to formats such as [[Portable Document Format|PDF]], [[PostScript]], and [[Portable Network Graphics|PNG]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#output |title=XML Output Method|date=2012-09-19}}</ref> Support for JSON and plain-text transformation was added in later updates to the XSLT 1.0 specification.

XSLT 3.0 implementations support Java, .NET, C/C++, Python, PHP and NodeJS. An XSLT 3.0 JavaScript library can also be hosted within the web browser. Modern web browsers also include native support for XSLT 1.0.<ref name="Used for">{{cite web|url=https://www.w3.org/standards/xml/transformation#uses|title=What is XSLT Used For?|date=2018-02-07}}</ref>

The XSLT document transformation specifies how to transform an XML document into new document (usually XML, but other formats, such as plain text are supported).<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#section-Introduction | title=Introduction | publisher=W3C | work=XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0 W3C Recommendation | date=16 November 1999 | access-date=November 7, 2012}}</ref> Typically, input documents are XML files, but anything from which the processor can build an [[XQuery and XPath Data Model]] can be used, such as [[relational database]] tables or [[geographical information systems]].<ref name="Transformation"/>

While XSLT was originally designed as a special-purpose language for XML transformation, the language is [[Turing completeness|Turing-complete]], making it theoretically capable of arbitrary computations.<ref>[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221568016_XSLT_Version_20_Is_Turing-Complete_A_Purely_Transformation_Based_Proof XSLT Version 2.0 Is Turing-Complete: A Purely Transformation Based Proof]</ref>