A good xslt IDE - Nesterovsky bros

Thursday, 15 January 2009

A simple demand nowdays - a good IDE.

Almost a ten years have passed since xslt has appeared but still, we're not pleased with IDEs claiming xslt support. Our expectaions are not too high. There are things however, which must be present in such an IDE.

A notion of project, and possibly a group of projects. You may think of it as a main xslt including other xslts participationg in the project.
A code completion. A feature providing typing hints for language constructs, includes, prefixes, namespaces, functions, templates, modes, variables, parameters, schema elements, and other (all this should work in a context of the project).
A code refactoring. A means to move parts of code between (or inside) files and projects, rename things (functions, templates, parameters, variables, prefixes, namespaces, and other).
Code validation and run.
Optional debug feature.

We would be grateful if someone had pointed to any such IDE.

Thursday, 15 January 2009 14:41:35 UTC

Comments [13] -
Incremental Parser | xslt

Thursday, 15 January 2009 15:54:42 UTC

I can recommend oXygen XML Editor. IMHO it could satisfy nearly all your requirements, except providing namespace prefixes which sometimes works and sometimes does not. Altought it's written in Java it's pretty fast and has best code completion I have seen so far. You will have to try code refactoring on your own, I do not use it much.

Maybe you would want to try evaluation version of IntelliJ IDEA with plugins XPathView + XSLT-Support and XSLT-Debugger. It's primarily Java IDE but with use of mentioned plugins, writing XSLT is much easies and "enjoyable". Best advantage of IDEA are advanced refactorings (provided by both IDEA and plugins) and easiness of creating new ones.

I hope you will find this comment somehow useful.

Josef

Josef Pavlas

Thursday, 15 January 2009 16:45:27 UTC

Josef,

Consider an example provided by xslt 2.0 spec:

"...For example, if stylesheet B includes stylesheet A, stylesheet C includes stylesheet A, and stylesheet D includes both stylesheet B and stylesheet C, then A will be included indirectly by D twice. If all of B, C and D are used as independent stylesheets, then the error can be avoided by separating everything in B other than the inclusion of A into a separate stylesheet B' and changing B to contain just inclusions of B' and A, similarly for C, and then changing D to include A, B', C'."

Unfortunately oXygen does not provide acceptable code completion and refactoring for such A', B', and C' modules, as it never looks defitions in including modules.

We never tried IntelliJ IDEA, and we shall try it.

Thank you for your feedback!

Vladimir Nesterovsky

Saturday, 17 January 2009 09:43:25 UTC

Try Stylus Studio http://www.stylusstudio.com/, especially last build, it's just great. support for multiple XSLT processors with debugging option and tons of other things.

Evi Skitsanos

Saturday, 17 January 2009 20:01:58 UTC

Hi Evi,

we'll try the Stylus Studio, of course, but right now our main issue is refactoring of XSLT, but not debugging. We unfortunately didn't found yet an IDE that supports good refactoring of XSLT 2.0. The example, Vladimir has mentioned above is rather close to status quo of our current project. Anyway, thanks for link.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Sunday, 18 January 2009 09:30:39 UTC

We want to stress that a code completion, refactoring and navigation are important to an xslt editor. Could you find a contemporary C++, java, C# developer, who did not demand these features? Debugger is also important, but if we had to select between a good xslt editor and a debugger, we would select the first.

We have checked the latest version of the Stylus Studio. It rather far from what we wished to see.

It's dreadful to say, however we could even live without that glossy xml and xsd bricks views that almost every IDE considers to be very important.

Vladimir Nesterovsky

Monday, 26 January 2009 22:17:04 UTC

Lets build one! :)
That's what IronXSLT was supposed to be. Now that I worked with new VS editor I'd say it's worth to wait a bit and build one based on VS 2010 - it's a dramatic improvement.

Oleg Tkachenko

Tuesday, 27 January 2009 10:35:43 UTC

Hi Oleg,

whether it will support XSLT 2.0, or MS will freeze out it forever?
It will be a bit strange to build such VS extension that need in third party XSLT engine.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Tuesday, 27 January 2009 10:46:42 UTC

Hello Oleg,

I think this is a good idea!
Can you please estimate efforts required to build (extend) such editor for xslt 2 (and optionally for xquery)?

Personally I think the most required features are intellisence and refactoring, which generally can be done without external engine.

Debug is an optional, but desired, feature.

Vladimir Nesterovsky

Saturday, 31 January 2009 07:47:33 UTC

Let's take this offline.

Oleg Tkachenko

Saturday, 31 January 2009 12:33:59 UTC

Xquery support indeed would be good to have...

Evi Skitsanos

Friday, 20 February 2009 22:51:07 UTC

Hi Oleg,

xmllab.net is offline. Where can I get a download for IronXSLT ??

Alex

Alex McCool

Saturday, 21 February 2009 07:07:13 UTC

Alex,

Oleg will eventually see your question or we can ask him, however, you may ask him directly on his site.

Thanks.

Vladimir Nesterovsky

Wednesday, 04 March 2009 07:33:36 UTC

Sorry, Alex, xmllab.net site has crashed and I'm still struggling to restore it.
You can download IronXSLT 0.3 at http://www.xmllab.net/downloads/ironxslt/

Oleg Tkachenko

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