Plazes Traces + XSLT = RSS

I did some experimenting this afternoon with taking my Plazes XML Traces file and using XSLT to transform it into RSS. I didn’t end up with a complete solution, but I came close:

• XML file (from Plazes)
• XSL file (that I created)
• RSS file (result of the transformation)

The problem I ran into is that in the Traces file dates are represented like this:

<location arrival="2005-06-10">

Whereas for the RSS file I need something that looks like this:

<pubDate>Sat, 25 Jun 2005 17:36:08 +0100</pubDate>

I need a way of converting dates from one form to another in pure XSLT. I found references here and here that suggested ways around XSLT’s poor date support, but I haven’t implemented them here. As a result, the resulting RSS file is missing a <pubDate>.

I welcome suggestions on how to improve this.

Update: You can use the W3C web-based XSLT processor to do the transformation: the result is RSS that can be fed to an aggregator or newsreader. The pre-packaged URL is here. To reduce load on their XSLT processor, however, please don’t subscribe to this URL.