Cocoa Beta Release: XSLHelper

I don’t know of any native Cocoa XML IDEs for Mac OS X. That kinda sucks.

So the options for XSLT debuggers on OS X are kinda slim. There are some very full-featured Java-based IDEs that run on OS X, but the better ones are payware, and, well — they look like shit on OS X, frankly.

Lately, I’ve really been digging into XSLT and EXSLT, trying to learn more — specifically using libxslt. In February, I released a very basic XSLT debugger application called AquaXSL. AquaXSL was a really basic text editor in which you could edit a source XML document and a stylesheet, and they apply the stylesheet to the source doc and view the results in a couple of different (pretty) ways.

The problem with AquaXSL is that it’s a really basic (crappy) text editor. I don’t have the skills, time or inclination to create a nice text editor on the level of TextEdit.app, let alone something like BBEdit or TextMate. So therefore, AquaXSL kinda sucked.

So as I’ve lately been doing my XSLT thang… I started using Marc Liyanage’s excellent XSLT Glossary for BBEdit. This glossary basically turns BBEdit into a nice XSLT editor (but not debugger). You get auto-completion of all of XSLT and XPath 1.0’s elements, attributes and functions. This is the type of thing AquaXSL lacks, and will never gain.

So I found that I wanted to edit my XSLT and XML source docs in BBEdit (using Marc’s glossary) but wanted to apply the stylesheet and debug in something more full-featured than Safari or Firefox. Those browsers will apply the stylesheet and give you some very basic, but mostly cryptic error messages. That’s just not a very good debugging environment.

What I wanted was a little floating palette that seemed like it was a part of BBEdit (or TextMate for that matter) in which I could select my source and stylesheet docs, click a ‘Transform’ button, and see debugging info as well as the results in various formats.

So that’s what I made.

For now I’m calling it XSLHelper, but that will prolly change, as I plan to generalize it to XQuery as well as XSLT.

Usage is simple. Compose your XSLT stylesheet locally in your text editor of choice. Use an XSLHelper floating palette to select your source doc (local or remote) and stylesheet (also can be remote if you like). Then click the ‘Transform’ button to apply the stylesheet and see the results.

Results are displayed in raw text form, a pretty dynamic XML tree view, and also rendered as an HTML web page if possible/appropriate.

Also, debugging info is displayed in a text field, so errors are easier to fix.

I hope some of you will try it and send feedback. The only feature addition I’m planning for 1.0 is a dynamic table UI for adding runtime <xsl:params/> to a stylesheet. That should be out soon.

Download XSLHelper 1.0b1 (44kb).

XSLHelper is based on libxslt, libxml2, WebKit and NSXML.