XSLT and Excel

[solex]

Hello,

Is there a way to develop a style sheet that runs on the client that will
open the file in excel?

Thanks,
Dan

[Derek Harmon]

"solex" <so***@nowhere.com> wrote in message news:#f**************@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

Is there a way to develop a style sheet that runs on the client that will
open the file in excel?

In general, XSLT style sheets can be used to transform one node
tree into another node tree, but they can't portably execute program
code.

Depending upon what XSLT processor you're using, it may be
possible to write an XSLT extension that executes program code
outside of the style sheet, but then strictly speaking you're not
writing XSLT anymore, but COM or something else.

If you run an XSLT style sheet on some data and produce a basic
HTML table, and the user is running Internet Explorer, and the user
has a recent release of Microsoft Excel installed; then the user can
sort of launch Excel by right-clicking on your HTML table and choosing
to Launch Microsoft Excel.

That's probably not as automatic a launch as you'd have liked.

What you probably want to do to accomplish this is to emit Javascript
into the web page that launchs Excel through OLE Automation, some-
thing like the following [untested] line,

var excel = new ActiveXObject( "Excel.Application");

Script is a superior means of executing code on the client compared
to XSLT style sheets.
Derek Harmon

[solex]

Derek,

Thank you for your response. I tried setting the content type in the XLST
but that did not seem to help. If I was executing this on the server there
would be no problem.

Regards,
Dan

"Derek Harmon" <lo*******@msn.com> wrote in message
news:ur**************@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...

"solex" <so***@nowhere.com> wrote in message

news:#f**************@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

Is there a way to develop a style sheet that runs on the client that will open the file in excel?

In general, XSLT style sheets can be used to transform one node
tree into another node tree, but they can't portably execute program
code.

Depending upon what XSLT processor you're using, it may be
possible to write an XSLT extension that executes program code
outside of the style sheet, but then strictly speaking you're not
writing XSLT anymore, but COM or something else.

If you run an XSLT style sheet on some data and produce a basic
HTML table, and the user is running Internet Explorer, and the user
has a recent release of Microsoft Excel installed; then the user can
sort of launch Excel by right-clicking on your HTML table and choosing
to Launch Microsoft Excel.

That's probably not as automatic a launch as you'd have liked.

What you probably want to do to accomplish this is to emit Javascript
into the web page that launchs Excel through OLE Automation, some-
thing like the following [untested] line,

var excel = new ActiveXObject( "Excel.Application");

Script is a superior means of executing code on the client compared
to XSLT style sheets.
Derek Harmon