XSLT Learnings

Just listing some XSLT learnings from a recent project where I had to learn from scratch.

Basic shelling:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0"> <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="no"/> <xsl:template match="/">     <!-- XSL stuff --> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

Converting a list of states from XML to HTML select input options:

Given an input like this:

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<states>     <AL>Alabama</AL>     <AK>Alaska</AK>     <AR>Arkansas</AR>     <CA>California</CA>     <CO>Colorado</CO> </states>

Use XSL like this:

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<select name="states">     <xsl:for-each select="states/*">         <option>              <xsl:attribute name="value"><xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/></xsl:attribute>         </option>         <xsl:value-of select="string(.)"/>     </xsl:for-each> </select>

To get this:

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<select>         <option value="AL">Alabama</option>         <option value="AK">Alaska</option>         <option value="AR">Arkansas</option>         <option value="CA">California</option>         <option value="CO">Colorado</option> </select>

Some few things to note:

• "name(.)" gives you the element (tag) name.
• "string(.)" gives you the element value (what is between opening and closong tags).

Checking element has children or content

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<xsl:if test="some/element-tag/text() != ''"> ... </xsl:if>