XSLT: unexpected result

saurabh0 · November 2nd, 2004, 10:04 AM

I am trying to transform this:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="b.xsl"?>
<aa>
   <bb>111</bb>
   <bb>222</bb>
   <bb>333</bb>
</aa>

Using this xsl:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
      <xsl:for-each select="aa">
        <xsl:value-of select="bb"/><br/>
      </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

and I am getting this output:

Code:

Whereas I was expecting:

Code:

111
222
333

Where am I going wrong ?

joefawcett · November 2nd, 2004, 10:38 AM

First you loop over all the aa elements, there's only one and can never be more as then your XML would be malformed. You then ask for the value of all the bb elements. In XSLT 1 the value is the string value of the first node. You either want:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:for-each select="aa/bb">
      <xsl:value-of select="."/><br/>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

or

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="bb">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/><br/>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

--

Joe (Co-author Beginning XML, 3rd edition)

saurabh0 · November 2nd, 2004, 11:45 AM

It worked, thanks a lot! :D

saurabh0 · November 2nd, 2004, 11:47 AM

I want to learn XSLT, could you recommend me a book ?

joefawcett · November 2nd, 2004, 01:21 PM

Well in some ways it's a bad time to learn from books as the new specification is out for version 2 but not many processors support it. Anything by Michael Kay will be good, your best bet is probably his latest work XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference, 3rd Edition.
It has all the new stuff but also indicates what is new so you can just use version one if you need to.
The original edition is where I learned from.

--

Joe (Co-author Beginning XML, 3rd edition)