XML: Presenting Data in Different Formats

Information pertaining to the way in which XML data must appear in a browser is specified using either CSS or XSLT style sheets. In certain situations, these two methods do not have the capability to display data in certain formats. For example, it is not feasible to display data in the form of tables using either of these documents. In such situations, it is both easier and less time-consuming to use other markup languages that are primarily created to display information in different formats in a browser.

Displaying Data in a Tabular Format

HTML is a markup language that is primarily used for data display. It provides a variety of predefined tags that can be used to display information in a web browser. You can combine the features of HTML and XSLT to format the data from an XML document for appropriate display.

Elements Required to Display Data in a Tabular Format

In order to use HTML tags in an XSLT style sheet, you first write the HTML code to display the data in the desired format. You then embed the HTML code in the XSLT document. The following table lists the HTML elements that are required to display data in a tabular format.

HTML Tag	Description
TABLE	Acts as a container for all other tags used to specify the appearance of data in a table. It has attributes, such as border, background color, cell-padding, cell-spacing, and width that enable you to specify the appearance of the table.
THEAD	Used to specify headings for a table.
TBODY	Used as a parent for the TR and TD elements.
TR	Used to represent a row in a table. This tag acts as a container for the TH and TD elements.
TH	Used to add column headings.
TD	Used to specify the data to be displayed in columns.