Altova XMLSpy 2025 Professional Edition

The XSL section (screenshot below) enables you to define options for XSLT transformations and XSL-FO transformations carried out from within the application. You can choose a preferred XSLT engine for transformations in XMLSpy. The relevant options for each engine are displayed in the Engine settings section when you select an engine. The Output File settings and XSL-FO Transformation settings that are available are the same for all engines. The screenshot below shows the settings when the built-in Altova RaptorXML XSLT engine is used.

Engine settings

You can set up an XSLT processor to carry out XSLT transformations when the XSLT Transformation command is invoked.

You can select one of the following XSLT engine options:

•Built-in RaptorXML XSLT engine

•Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML)

•External XSLT engine

Altova RaptorXML XSLT Engine

XMLSpy contains the Altova RaptorXML XSLT 1.0, XSLT 2.0, and XSLT 3.0 engines, which you can use for XSLT transformations. The appropriate XSLT engine (1.0, 2.0, or 3.0) is used (according to the value of the version attribute  of the xsl:stylesheet or xsl:transform element). This applies both for XSLT transformations as well as for XSLT debugging using XMLSpy's XSLT/XQuery Debugger.

If you wish to validate the XML files used in transformations, select the Validate option (see screenshot above).

Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML)

One or more of the MSXML 3.0, 4.0, or 6.0 parsers will be pre-installed on your machine. If you know which installed version you want to sue, you could select it. Otherwise, you should let XMLSpy select the version automatically. (The Choose version automatically option is active by default.) In this case, XMLSpy tries to select the most recent available version.

External XSLT engine

Choose an external XSLT processor of your choice by entering the path to its executable file.

You must specify the command line string that the external XSLT processor uses to run a transformation. You can build the command line string with the following components:

%1        = XML document to process

%2        = Output file to generate

%3        = XSLT stylesheet to use (if the XML document does not contain a reference to a stylesheet)

For example, say you have a processor that uses the following command pattern to run an XSLT transformation:

myxsltengine.exe -o <output.xml> <input.xml> <stylesheet.xslt> <param-name>=<param-value>?

Then, in XMLSpy, build the command line using the corresponding variables in the correct locations. For example:

c:\MyEngine.exe -o %2 %1 %3 date=2023

XMLSpy will send the correct input files to the external engine for processing and return the output file/s to an output location if one is specified and/or to an application window.

Check the respective check boxes to show the output and error messages of the external program in the Messages Window of XMLSpy.

Output File settings

The following options are available:

•Default file extension: Sets a default file extension for output files, which can be overridden by the file extension named in the XSLT element xsl:output (see last list item).

•Reuse output window: Causes subsequent transformations to display the result document in the same output window. If the input XML file belongs to a project and Reuse output window option is disabled, the setting only takes effect if the Save in folder output file path (screenshot below) in the relevant project properties is also disabled.

•Use file extension of xsl:output element: Selects whether the file extension specified in the xsl:output element of the XSLT stylesheet would override the default extension specified in the first option of this list.

XSL-FO Transformation settings

FO documents are processed using an FO processor, and the path to the executable of the FO processor must be specified in the text box for the XSL-FO transformation engine. The transformation is carried out using the XSL/XQuery | XSL-FO Transformation menu command. If the source file (the active document when the command is executed in the IDE) is an XSL-FO document, the FO processor is invoked for the transformation. If the source document is an XML document, an XSLT transformation is required to first convert the XML document to an XSL-FO document. This XSLT transformation can be carried out either by the XSLT engine you have specified as the default engine for the application (see above), or by the XSLT engine that might be built into the FO processor you have specified as the default FO processor for the application. To select between these two options, click the appropriate radio button.

Save and exit

After making the settings, click OK to finish.