I am having trouble with using XSLT. It's confusing as to why but basically I have valid html and I am transforming it to my own xml. What I want to do is the following:

I have an html table. There are many elements in a <td> element.
For example it may look like this:

<td>
<p>this is a test</p>
<br/>
<a href="link">this is a link</a>
<a href="link2">this is another link</a>
<br/>

<br/>
</td>

What I want to do is that everytime there is a <br/>, end the current panel and start a new panel.

So it would look like:

<surroundingTag>
 <myOwnTag>
  <p>this is a test</p>
 </myOwnTag>
 <myOwnTag>
  <a href="link">this is a link</a>
  <a href="link2">this is another link</a>
 </myOwnTag>
 <myOwnTag>

 </myOwnTag>
</surroundingTag>


Right now I have this:

...

<xsl:template match="tr">
  <xsl:for-each select=".">
   <surroundingTag>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="td"/>
   </surroundingTag>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="td">

<xsl:for-each select=".">
 <myOwnTag>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
 </myOwnTag>
</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

I want to do something like this...although I know it doesn't work. When a <br/> is read. I want to close the current tag by </myOwnTag>, then start a new tag by <myOwnTag>...

<xsl:template match="//table//br">

</myOwnTag>
<myOwnTag>

</xsl:template>

I know that doesn't work. I am new to this. Any ideas how to accomplish this??

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Here you go... Altough I don't think it's very "elegant" to use <xsl:text> to output tags, this stylesheet follows your basic idea. IMHO you should just ignore the <br/> and use another mean to enclose the same tags in <myOwnTag> elements...

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <myDoc>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </myDoc>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="//tr">
        <xsl:for-each select=".">
            <surroundingTag>
                <xsl:apply-templates select="td"/>
            </surroundingTag>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="td">
        <xsl:for-each select=".">
            <myOwnTag>
                <xsl:apply-templates/>

            </myOwnTag>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="//table//br">
        <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;/myOwnTag></xsl:text>
        <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;myOwnTag></xsl:text>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="p|a|hr">
        <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Dijkstra's law on Programming and Inertia:

If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, don't try to write it.