Default Namespace

Belch · July 22nd, 2011, 08:40 AM

Hi all,
I understand namespaces are a big topic in this forum and I have gone through a lot of the material on here, but have a bit of a more specific question.

My source xml is along the lines of:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<City xmlns="http://somenamespace.com">
  <Street>
    <House>my cottage</House>
.....

As you can see there is a default namespace.
In my xslt I have defined a prefix set to that namespace, and if I use this prefix in any xpath it works fine, e.g:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xyz="http://somenamespace.com">
...
<xsl:value-of select="xyz:City/xyz:Street/xyz:House" />
...

The value-of is within a template that is called based on the match "*|/", i.e. everything.

Like I say, this works fine, but I have a large stylesheet and want to avoid using xyz: in front of every tag.

Is there a way to tell the stylesheet every tag is in this namespace? Basically so I can use a value-of such as "City/Street/House".

Removing even one of these xyz: prefixes currently returns nothing.

Thanks in advance,

Martin Honnen · July 22nd, 2011, 08:50 AM

With XSLT 2.0 and an XSLT 2.0 processor like Saxon 9 or Altova or XQSharp use xpath-default-namespace="http://somenamespace.com" on your xsl: stylesheet element.

Belch · August 3rd, 2011, 08:09 AM

Hi Martin, thanks for your response.

I haven't had a chance to revisit this work I'm doing, hence the delay in responding.

Our xslt processor is version 1.0 unfortunately, is there a way to do it on that version?

Martin Honnen · August 3rd, 2011, 08:16 AM

No, path-default-namespace is a new feature in XSLT 2.0. With XSLT 1.0 you need to use a prefix to qualify element names that belong to a namespace.

Belch · August 3rd, 2011, 09:02 AM

Thought that might be the case, looks like I have lots of namespace prefixes to add!

Thanks for your help Martin.