Move Hugo blog source to main, fix workflow, add new articles and llms.txt

- Move site/ Hugo source from gh-pages to main so the workflow can trigger correctly - Fix publish-hugo.yml: now in main, builds and deploys to gh-pages:docs/ via peaceiris/actions-gh-pages - Add 3 new SEO articles: XSLT 3.0 features, beginners guide, template matching - Add llms.txt to blog and frontend so ChatGPT/Gemini can recommend the tool better - Remove stale /site mkdocs ignore rule, add site/public to gitignore instead Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-22 13:43:14 +00:00 · 2026-04-08 14:40:12 +02:00
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+---
+title: "XSLT for beginners: your first transformation"
+description: "Learn XSLT from scratch with practical examples. Transform XML step by step using templates, match patterns, and value-of."
+date: 2025-02-20T00:00:00Z
+tags: ["beginners", "xslt", "tutorial"]
+---
+
+XSLT is a language for transforming XML documents into other formats — another XML structure, HTML, plain text, or JSON. If you are new to it, the learning curve can feel steep because XSLT is declarative and template-driven, which is different from procedural languages. This guide walks you through the core ideas with working examples you can run in [XSLT Playground](https://xsltplayground.com) right now.
+
+## What XSLT does
+
+You start with an XML source document. You write a stylesheet that describes rules for transforming it. The processor reads both and produces an output document. The stylesheet does not loop through the input line by line — instead, it defines templates that match nodes, and the processor calls those templates as it traverses the document tree.
+
+## Your first stylesheet
+
+Start with a simple XML document:
+
+```xml
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<catalog>
+  <book id="b1">
+    <title>Design Patterns</title>
+    <author>Gang of Four</author>
+    <price>45.00</price>
+  </book>
+  <book id="b2">
+    <title>Clean Code</title>
+    <author>Robert Martin</author>
+    <price>38.00</price>
+  </book>
+</catalog>
+```
+
+Now write a stylesheet that turns this into an HTML table:
+
+```xml
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
+  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
+
+  <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>
+
+  <xsl:template match="/">
+    <html>
+      <body>
+        <table border="1">
+          <tr>
+            <th>Title</th>
+            <th>Author</th>
+            <th>Price</th>
+          </tr>
+          <xsl:apply-templates select="catalog/book"/>
+        </table>
+      </body>
+    </html>
+  </xsl:template>
+
+  <xsl:template match="book">
+    <tr>
+      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
+      <td><xsl:value-of select="author"/></td>
+      <td><xsl:value-of select="price"/></td>
+    </tr>
+  </xsl:template>
+
+</xsl:stylesheet>
+```
+
+Paste both into [XSLT Playground](https://xsltplayground.com) and run it. You will see an HTML table with the book data.
+
+## Understanding templates
+
+The `<xsl:template match="/">` rule fires when the processor reaches the document root. Inside it, `<xsl:apply-templates select="catalog/book"/>` tells the processor to find all `book` elements inside `catalog` and call the matching template for each one.
+
+The second template `<xsl:template match="book">` fires once per `book` element. Inside it, `<xsl:value-of select="title"/>` extracts the text content of the `title` child.
+
+This is the core loop of XSLT: match, apply, select.
+
+## XPath selects nodes
+
+The `select` and `match` attributes use XPath, a path language for navigating XML trees. A few rules you will use constantly:
+
+| XPath | Meaning |
+|---|---|
+| `catalog/book` | `book` children of `catalog` |
+| `//book` | All `book` elements anywhere in the document |
+| `book/@id` | The `id` attribute of `book` |
+| `book[price > 40]` | Books whose price exceeds 40 |
+| `.` | The current node |
+| `..` | The parent of the current node |
+
+## Filtering with predicates
+
+Add a predicate to the `apply-templates` call to show only books over 40:
+
+```xml
+<xsl:apply-templates select="catalog/book[price > 40]"/>
+```
+
+Or use `xsl:if` inside the template:
+
+```xml
+<xsl:template match="book">
+  <xsl:if test="price > 40">
+    <tr>
+      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
+    </tr>
+  </xsl:if>
+</xsl:template>
+```
+
+## Sorting output
+
+Use `xsl:sort` to control the order:
+
+```xml
+<xsl:apply-templates select="catalog/book">
+  <xsl:sort select="price" data-type="number" order="ascending"/>
+</xsl:apply-templates>
+```
+
+## What to try next
+
+Once you are comfortable with templates and XPath:
+
+- Learn `xsl:for-each` for inline iteration
+- Explore `xsl:choose` for multi-branch conditionals
+- Try `xsl:variable` to store intermediate values
+- Look at `xsl:param` to pass values into your stylesheet from outside
+
+All of these work in XSLT 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. The [XSLT Playground](https://xsltplayground.com) lets you set the version and experiment without installing anything.