XSLT
XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a declarative programming language used for transforming XML documents into other formats, such as HTML, plain text, or other XML structures. It operates by applying templates defined in an XSLT stylesheet to the nodes of an XML source document, enabling data conversion, restructuring, and presentation. XSLT is commonly used in web development, data integration, and document processing to separate content from presentation and automate XML transformations.
Developers should learn XSLT when working with XML-based data, such as in web services, content management systems, or legacy enterprise applications, to transform and render data efficiently. It is particularly useful for converting XML to HTML for web display, generating reports, or integrating disparate data sources by restructuring XML documents. XSLT's declarative nature makes it well-suited for complex transformations without procedural code, though it can be less intuitive for those accustomed to imperative programming.