XML to HTML using XSLT, input and output strings rather than files

Question

I have worked through some XSLT tutorials, and all of them talk about using input and output files; In my specific case I have the XML and XSL all as strings - I read them from the database at runtime, and it changes depending on the record I am working with.

Is there a way to do some sort of conversion in order to manipulate the StreamSource, to give it the actual string instead of a file name?

I'm talking about:

        TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xsl));
        StreamSource src = new StreamSource(new FileInputStream(xml)); 

where xml and xls are both strings, containing the actual xml or the actual xsl.

Answer 1

Use a StringReader and use the StreamSource constructor that takes the reader as arguments.

Here's a MCVE:

package transformStrings;

import java.io.StringReader;
import java.io.StringWriter;

import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;

public class transformFromStrings {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws TransformerException
    {
            StringReader xmlReader = new StringReader("<x/>");
            StreamSource xmlSource = new StreamSource(xmlReader);

            StringReader xslReader = new StringReader("<xsl:stylesheet version=\"1.0\"  xmlns:xsl=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform\"><xsl:template match=\"/\">OMG!</xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>");
            StreamSource xslSource = new StreamSource(xslReader);

            TransformerFactory factory  = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
            Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(xslSource);

            StringWriter resultWriter = new StringWriter();
            transformer.transform(xmlSource, new javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult(resultWriter));
            System.out.println(resultWriter.toString());
    }
}