SaxonHE12s9apiExtensions 12.5.0

Saxon HE 12 s9api .NET extension method helpers

Extension methods that help/ease the task of using Saxon HE 12 Java s9api from .NET code

This is a sample project outlining my successful attempt to apply https://github.com/ikvm-revived/ikvm and https://github.com/ikvm-revived/ikvm-maven to use the open-source Saxon HE 12 Java XSLT 3.0, XQuery 3.1 and XPath 3.1 library in .NET 6 or .NET 8 code or .NET framework 4.8 code.

Please understand that this is my own experiment, it uses the official Saxon HE 12 release from Maven, but the integration with IKVM and IKVM Maven is an experimental work of my own, not in any way an officially tested and supported product by Saxonica, the company that has produced Saxon.

So feel free to try and use it under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

Understand that this is work in progress and kind of experimental, I don't have access to a complete test suite of unit tests to rigorously test this, I nevertheless feel it can be useful for folks to at least know about this option to run XSLT 3.0, XPath 3.1 and XQuery 3.1 in .NET 6 or .NET 8 code or .NET framework 4.8 code.

To use Saxon under .NET, the coding is mainly done against the Java s9api API of Saxon HE 12 although I have provided some extension methods as helpers to ease the task of using .NET FileInfo or Stream instead of needing to know about and use Java specific java.io.File or Stream classes/APIs.

With this new release based on IKVM 8.8.0 and IKVM.Maven.Sdk 1.6.9 both using and building the package on Windows (including Windows ARM) and MacOs should work.

The basic usage is to to install the NuGet package IKVM.Maven.Sdk to be able to pull in the Saxon HE 12 (12.1 and later should Java 8 and therefore IKVM compatible) from Maven:

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="IKVM.Maven.Sdk" Version="1.6.9" />
    <MavenReference Include="net.sf.saxon:Saxon-HE" version="12.5" />
    
  </ItemGroup>

This extension project is also on NuGet so you can add it in your project e.g.

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="IKVM.Maven.Sdk" Version="1.6.9" />
    <PackageReference Include="SaxonHE12s9apiExtensions" Version="12.5.0" />
    
  </ItemGroup>

Then you are ready to write .NET 6 or .NET framework 4.8 code against the Saxon 12 s9api API, helped by this extension library to not have to use most Java classes for input/output/URIs/URLs but to be able to use relevant .NET classes:

using net.sf.saxon.s9api;
using net.liberty_development.SaxonHE12s9apiExtensions;
//using System.Reflection;

// force loading of updated xmlresolver (hopefully no longer needed with current release Saxon HE 12.5)
//ikvm.runtime.Startup.addBootClassPathAssembly(Assembly.Load("org.xmlresolver.xmlresolver"));
//ikvm.runtime.Startup.addBootClassPathAssembly(Assembly.Load("org.xmlresolver.xmlresolver_data"));

var processor = new Processor(false);

Console.WriteLine($"{processor.getSaxonEdition()} {processor.getSaxonProductVersion()}");

var xslt30Transformer = processor.newXsltCompiler().Compile(new Uri("https://github.com/martin-honnen/martin-honnen.github.io/raw/master/xslt/processorTestHTML5Xslt3InitialTempl.xsl")).load30();

xslt30Transformer.callTemplate(null, processor.NewSerializer(Console.Out));