Geert,
At 04:18 AM 11/9/2004, you wrote:
Bradley, Peter wrote:
Of course! To simply pass through all the content in the data file, all
I need is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
version="1.0">
</xsl:stylesheet>
The recursive processing; the default templates; these will take care of
the rest.
Depends on what you mean by content. The default templates preserve the
character data of the data file. Note that this includes character data in
attributes, though you are not using them currently.
Unless I mistake your meaning: almost but not quite.
The default template for attributes, it is true, is
<xsl:template match="attribute::*">
<xsl:value-of select="self::node()"/>
</xsl:template>
But, as you also know, the default template for elements is (again using
long syntax for clarity):
<xsl:template match="child::*">
<xsl:apply-templates select="child::node()"/>
</xsl:template>
... and since attributes must, perforce, be reached via their parent
elements, but they are not children of those parents (they have been
disinherited and don't get invited to holiday dinners except by special
invitation), they are not selected by the apply-templates here.
Consequently, the data content of attributes *would* come through, but does
not, since no attribute is ever selected for processing by default. (Try it
and see.)
This interesting feature of the data model (attributes have parents but are
not children; you need to use the attribute:: axis to reach them) is one of
several examples of how XSLT's designers were subtle -- perhaps too subtle
in some respects -- designing a system that works exactly the way you
usually would want, but not for exactly the reasons you might guess. In
this case, the default traversal and built-in templates are designed to
result in clean handling of exactly the kind of data Peter has:
heterogeneous structures with arbitrarily mixed content, in which
attributes are relegated to a "support" role, such as is typical in
document-oriented XML.
Comments, processing-instructions and 'tags' are suppressed by default.
Tags, as David C constantly reminds us, are not even present in the data model.
Comments and PIs are selected by default (they come back from
"child::node()"), but as you suggest, their built-in templates are empty
(no value gets added to the tree as with text nodes or attributes), so they
are suppressed.
Thanks for being the straw man here: of course, I'm not really writing for
you but for all our newbie friends, whose mothers (for whatever
reprehensible reasons) neglected to provide them with XSLT instruction in
the womb.
Cheers,
Wendell
======================================================================
Wendell Piez
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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