Hi, /johnny CS,
I'm a newbie too, that's probably helping me understand what you're trying
to do. Looks like you did your homework before asking (I did the same
thing:). I got a kick start from this list that helped me "click". Hope
you'll get the same benefit:).
Here's my two cents, if something is wrong no flaming necessary, I was just
trying to help.
I've got an XML structure as so:
<name></name>
<name></name>
<name>
<name></name>
<list>
<item></item>
<list>
</name>
<name></name>
Now, I've been able to get at what I want using the examples
provided by
this list, so I'm not having difficulty with the more
intermediate steps,
however, I'm having difficulty getting my head this:
What if I just want to select the <name> node? If I use
<xsl:apply-templates/> and select "name" I get all name
elements, plus the
item element which I don't want. I just want a list of names
from the name
elements.
The way I handled this very same problem in my code was by using
<xsl:apply-templates "name/name"/>. That way you'll select only the nodes
named "name" that are children of nodes named "name".
I was able to find the solution to my problem:
<xsl:template match="class[class]">
<xsl:apply-templates select="class"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="class">
<xsl:element name="option">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
I guess that might work if the default axis for the predicate is the child
axis (which it should). Don't know enough about XSLT to tell you "yay" or
"nay".
I did not know you could use a select attribute when applying
templates. But
this leaves me with a question: If I left "select" out of the
apply-templates xsl element, I would have thought it would
only apply the
templates that I defined. Does the processor output all nodes
anyway? In
other words, if I put in an "apply-templates" element, and I have no
templates defined for a particular node (or set?), why do I
get output?
I think this is where my confusion lies, and isn't really explained in
simple terms anywhere I have looked.
The "select" attribute is optional. When it is absent, all children of the
current node are selected. Or so my book says. The matching process
continued to the children where it might have matched some of your
templates, so it displayed them.
I posted the solution in my previous reply to this thread
topic. My main
question, repeated, is why do all the nodes get output if I haven't
specified a template? I'm not sure if that question makes
sense to advanced
users. I suppose I'm used to procedural programming where nothing gets
output unless I specify what needs to be output. In XSL, it seems that
although I think I'm being specific in my template matching,
it will return
the child elements as well, which, right now, is only
starting to make sense
to me but I'm still a little fuzzy about it.
If your XML document is pretty simple, be careful to draw conclusions and
generalize. You might match everything in your input tree just because it
goes only a couple of branches down from the root.
There is a built-in template rule for nodes that are not
matched by an
explicit template rule. This rule does a recursive
apply-templates for
element nodes, and for text nodes it outputs the content.
If you want to
override this, write a rule such as:
<xsl:template match="*"/>
Michael Kay
If using the <xsl:apply-templates/> element without the "select" attribute
all children of the current node are selected. Once one of the child nodes
is the current node, same thing happens. So that makes it recursive as
Michael says (or so it seems to me).
Regards,
Constantin Vasiliu
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list