I need to convert a bunch of xml files to a format that is almost exactly the same as the original, ex:

<foo>
  <bar>text</bar>
  <foobar>
    <bar>text</bar>
  </foobar>
</foo>

becomes

<foo>
  <boff>text</boff>
  <foobar>
    <boff>text</boff>
  </foobar>
</foo>

This I thought would be trivial to do by applying an xslt to all of them, but is turning out to be a problem for me (I'm probably just missing some simple solution to this).

Is there a simple way to create a xslt that outputs exactly the same xml as the input except applies templates to a small set of element names?

Cheers!
Sindri

Sure, there's a standard coding pattern for this. Write an identity template that copies elements unchanged:

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

and then override it for elements you want to modify:

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


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

That does the trick. Thanks!

Sindri