Copy source-element to output tree

der_bAUer · June 4th, 2006, 06:34 AM

Hi,
i am trying to do a simple template engine in XSLT to separate content from structure/design. I don't want do invent a whole new XML language for that, so I want to stick to XHTML.

Basically, I have an XML file like this:

Code:

<entry>
<metadata>
<dateCreated>04.06.06</dateCreated>
<title>Test Entry</title>
</metadata>

<content>

</content>
</entry>

I want the result to be like this:

Code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Test Entry</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Test Entry</h1>

</body>
</html>

How can I achieve this? I use the client-side XSLT transformation of Mozilla 1.5. When I experimented with the following, called from another template, Mozilla complained about the recursive loop.

Code:

 <xsl:template name="all" match="*">
 
    <xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
    <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>

    <xsl:call-template name="all"/>
    </xsl:element>

</xsl:template>

mhkay · June 4th, 2006, 03:45 PM

You seem to be trying to reinvent for yourself the concept of an identity template. The most usual form of identity template is

<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:copy>
  <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

Note that apply-templates processes the children of the context item, so this does a depth-first tree walk - it's recursive, but it terminates.

An identity template is useful if you want to override it for selected elements within a subtree. If you just want to copy an XHTML subtree without change, use xsl:copy-of.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

der_bAUer · June 9th, 2006, 08:17 AM

Thanks, i got it working now.