XSLT-for-EMu

XSLT reports for KE EMu

This is a selection of XSLT reports for KE EMu, created to provide background for a talk given at an axiell meeting in 2015. Context and explanation for the reports can be found in the notes from that talk.

Update in 2025: These are rather old so any javascript libraries will be hopelessly out of date but the general principles will still work. If doing this now I would omit the excel reports and include how useful it can be to create a quick html table report as you can usually copy-and-paste from them into excel. For excel or csv reports the method in this repo should still work in theory but we use a different, much easier to use (once set up), filter to generate excel reports.

To run the reports from EMu

To run any of these report you'll need to

• create a new report of type XSLT report
• add the required fields to the report
• upload the XSLT file to EMu
• then run the report

There is sure to be some differences between the fieldnames in the South Australian Museum installation and yours so you may need to change some of the fields. Try them out and if they don't work have a look at the output XML - see below for how to get it - and compare it to the XPath in the XSLT files.

To test the reports

To test the reports on your own computer you will still need an XML file containing the appropriate fields. To get this file firstly search for a bunch of records that contain the data you want to report on (That reminder could save you hours of debugging). Select a manageable amount of records then

Either

1. Export XML Document report
2. Create a new report of type Export XML Document
3. Add the appropriate fields to the report
4. Run the report
5. Save the output to your working directory

or

2. XSLT report
3. Create a new report of type XSLT report
4. Add the appropriate fields to the report
5. Run the report
6. Copy the output to your working directory. The output will have been saved to %AppData%\Local\Temp\xmldata.xml

using the windows command prompt

You should use cygwin or Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Bash on Ubuntu on Windows is more convenient but won't allow you to use the default xslt processor that comes with EMu.

If you're not using cygwin or Bash then from a command prompt run

"c:\Program Files (x86)\KESoftware\[Whatever your EMu installation is called]\xslt.exe" [The xslt file name] [the xml file name]

The output file will automatically open in the appropriate program. I was unable to work out how to save the output into a file

using bash on windows

The default processor won't work with bash so you need to use xsltproc

using xsltproc

install xsltproc

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install xsltproc

$ xsltproc [The xslt file name] [the xml file name]

To get the output to automatically open in the appropriate program or

$ xsltproc [The xslt file name] [the xml file name] > [temporary file name.extension]

To save the result to a file

using cygwin

To use the default processor:

$ /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/KESoftware/[Whatever your EMu installation is called]/xslt.exe [The xslt file name] [the xml file name]

To get the output to automatically open in the appropriate program or

$ /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/KESoftware/[Whatever your EMu installation is called]/xslt.exe [The xslt file name] [the xml file name] > [temporary file name.extension]

To save the result to a file

To use xsltproc

Install xsltproc (it's not listed explicitly in the cygwin repositories, you get it by installing libxml2 and libxslt) then run

$ xsltproc [The xslt file name] [the xml file name]

To get the output to automatically open in the appropriate program or

$ xsltproc [The xslt file name] [the xml file name] > [temporary file name.extension]

To save the result to a file

Using oXygen XML editor

Have the xml file open in one side of the screen and the xslt file open in the other

1. Click the mouse in the XML file
2. Click the 'play' (Apply Transformation Scenario) buttton
3. Select 'New'
4. Select 'XML Transformation with XSL'
5. Select the XSLT file from the drop-down in XSL URL
6. Select 'OK'