Setup a parametered xml source for xsl?

Question

Hi there ppl!
I'm using xsl transformation to display some xml data on my php pages. The basic stuff is pretty clear to me but I have an issue that I just cannot figure out myself: after having displayed a lit of records from an xml source I want to display some details when clicking on a specific item. This also should be pretty simple in theory but....my xml are not static files, they get generated on the fly by some server app, the source being something like:
http://www.website.com/get_xml
On a php page I read the xml source and write the output and I use that php file as my xml source.
The problem arise when my xml is genrated by a parametered query like:
http://www.website.com/get_xml?id=9999
I want to pass the id parameter from my list to the detail page where it will be used in the DWXMLSource:
DWXMLSource="http://www.website.com/get_xml?id=xxxx
where id is the url parameter value passed by the listing page
Can I do it??
Thanx for your help!

Answer 1

The XSLT fragment extracts the data from the XML file and formats it according to your instructions. The following tutorial in the Adobe Developer Connection explains how to create the XSLT Fragment: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/server_side_xsl.html.
Since you're working with a dynamically generated XML document, the best way to create the XSLT Fragment is probably to save a copy locally of the XML output, and use that as a static XML source. Once you have created the XSLT Fragment, you should be able to use the URL of the dynamically generated source and pass the parameter to it as described before.
All this depends on the XML output being of a predictable nature. If different parameters produce a completely different XML structure, it won't work. For example, if the XML output always uses <feed> as its root element and <item> as a repeating element, it should work. However, if one parameter produces output with <feed> and another parameter uses <photos>, it won't work.
I have used XSLT fragments to display the output of RSS news feeds. RSS has a fixed, predictable structure, so it works just fine.