Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework

29 vgr-land 9 8/24/2025, 5:38:30 PM vgr.land ↗
A few weeks ago a friend sent me grug-brain XSLT (1) which inspired me to redo my personal blog in XSLT.

Rather than just build my own blog on it, I wrote it up for others to use and I've published it on GitHub https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework (2)

Since others have XSLT on the mind, now seems just as good of a time as any to share it with the world. Evidlo@ did a fine job explaining the "how" xslt works (3)

The short version on how to publish using this framework is:

1. Create a new post in HTML wrapped in the XML headers and footers the framework expects.

2. Tag the post so that its unique and the framework can find it on build

3. Add the post to the posts.xml file

And that's it. No build system to update menus, no RSS file to update (posts.xml is the rss file). As a reusable framework, there are likely bugs lurking in CSS, but otherwise I'm finding it perfectly usable for my needs.

Finally, it'd be a shame if XSLT is removed from the HTML spec (4), I've found it quite eloquent in its simplicity.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393817

(2) https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework

(3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988271

(4) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44952185

(Aside - First time caller long time listener to hn, thanks!)

Comments (9)

dehrmann · 26m ago
Haven't seen this much interest in XML/XSLT in 20 years.
ajxs · 21m ago
The core concept behind XSLT is evergreen: Being able to programmatically transform the results of a HTTP request into a document with native tools is still useful. I don't foresee any equivalent native framework for styling JSON ever coming into being though.
mpyne · 1m ago
> I don't foresee any equivalent native framework for styling JSON ever coming into being though.

Well yeah I hope not! That's what a programming language is for, to turn data into documents.

stmw · 17m ago
I could easily imagine a functional-programming JSON transformation language, or perhaps even a JSLT based on latest XSLT spec. The key in these things is to constraing what is can do.
ajxs · 7m ago
We wouldn't even need anything as complex as XSLT, or a functional language for transforming JSON. Other markup-based template processing systems exist for higher-level languages like Pug, Mustache, etc. for Node.js. You could achieve a lot with a template engine in the browser!
b_e_n_t_o_n · 6m ago
JSX!
stmw · 1h ago
It's nice to see this. Things used to be simple! (XSLT itself should've been simpler of course).

BTW, as I commented on earlier HN threads re: removal of XSLT support from HTML spec and browswers, IBM owns a high-performance XSLT implementation that they may want to consider contributing to one or more browsers. (It is a JIT that generates machine code directly from XSLT and several other data transformation and policy languages, and then executes it).

b_e_n_t_o_n · 24m ago
I guess I just don't get the point. In order for the page to load it needed to make four round trips on the server sequentially which ended up loading slower than my bloated javascript spa framework blog on a throttled connection. I don't really see how this is preferential to html, especially when there is a wealth of tools for building static blogs. Is it the no-build aspect of it?
therealfiona · 2h ago
I got my file extensions mixed up, thought this was going to be a "Use M$ Excel as an IDE" type post.