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Re: arbitrary depth element type conversion

2006-02-03 13:26:14
Wendell Piez <wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

Sebastian,

In addition to what David said, consider the following more succinct
version of your algorithm:

  <xsl:template match="document">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <div class="{name()}">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </div>
  </xsl:template>

It does the same thing the same way. I often encourage newcomers to
try writing things the long way, as it makes things more
explicit. Here, the difference between the long way and the short way
(using literal result elements and an attribute value template instead
of xslt instructions for everything) is so dramatic, I thought it
worthwhile making the opposite recommendation.

In particular (in the context of the question you first raised), note
that no explicit statement requesting any values (i.e., any data
content) is here, or called for -- look ma, no value-of -- in either
this version or yours (as corrected by DC). That's because it's using,
instead, the built-in template for text nodes, which looks like this,
and which will fire, since you have nothing to override it:

<xsl:template match="text()">
  <xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>

Trusting that this will work and getting the hang of "letting it
happen" in XSLT's template-matching processing model is often an early
hurdle, higher for some learners than others.

Cheers,
Wendell

Thank you all.  We're just not used to having things done for us are
we!

sdt



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