Create a framework to support XSLT transformation pipelines

(Jake Miles) Explore the creation of a framework, called Butterfly, that runs in PHP 5 and facilitates the applications of chains of XSLT stylesheets to XML source documents. This provides transparent caching of the transformed results. Inspired by the Java-based Apache Cocoon project, so named because it houses and manages the transformation of data from one form to another (turning caterpillars into butterflies), this much lighter-weight framework is named Butterfly. With the Butterfly framework, you can set up an XML configuration file to define chains of stylesheet transformations, and then instantiate Butterfly objects that can each produce the result of an XSLT transformation chain. This article will also look at the nature of framework design in general as it sketches out this framework in particular.