What#39;s the difference between CSS, XPath, XSLT and XQuery?

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Learn XQUERY and EveryThing Xquery
Description:

In this session in the Advanced Digital Editing series, we define and unpack four languages or technologies often used to ...

Here's a breakdown of the differences between CSS, XPath, XSLT, and XQuery:

1. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

  • Purpose: Primarily used for styling and layout of HTML documents.
  • Use Case: Applies visual styles (colors, fonts, spacing) to HTML elements.
  • Syntax: Uses selectors to target HTML elements and apply styles.
  • Example:
    css
    h1 {
  color: blue;
  font-size: 24px;
}

2. XPath (XML Path Language)

  • Purpose: A language for navigating through elements and attributes in an XML document.
  • Use Case: Used to select nodes from an XML document.
  • Syntax: Uses path expressions to navigate through the XML structure.
  • Example:
    xpath
    /library/book/title
    This selects the title elements of all books in the library.

3. XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations)

  • Purpose: A language for transforming XML documents into other formats (like HTML, plain text, or other XML).
  • Use Case: Often used in conjunction with XPath to apply transformations using stylesheets.
  • Syntax: Uses templates and rules to define how to transform the XML.
  • Example:
    xml
    <xsl:template match="/library">
  <html>
    <body>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="book"/>
    </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

4. XQuery (XML Query Language)

  • Purpose: A functional query language designed to query and manipulate XML data.
  • Use Case: Can retrieve, transform, and aggregate data from XML documents.
  • Syntax: Combines elements of functional programming with SQL-like query capabilities.
  • Example:
    xquery
    for $book in doc("books.xml")/library/book
return <title>{ $book/title/text() }</title>

Summary of Differences

  • CSS is for styling HTML, XPath is for navigating XML data, XSLT is for transforming XML documents, and XQuery is for querying and manipulating XML data.
  • CSS and XSLT are primarily concerned with presentation, while XPath and XQuery focus on data retrieval and manipulation.