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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T21:51:16+00:00

All the tutorials and examples I’ve found of XSLT processing seem to assume your

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All the tutorials and examples I’ve found of XSLT processing seem to assume your destination will be a significantly different format/structure to your source and that you know the structure of the source in advance. I’m struggling with finding out how to perform simple “in-place” modifications to a HTML document without knowing anything else about its existing structure.

Could somebody show me a clear example that, given an arbitrary unknown HTML source will:

1.) delete the classname 'foo' from all divs
2.) delete a node if its empty (ie <p></p>)
3.) delete a <p> node if its first child is <br>
4.) add newattr="newvalue" to all H1
5.) replace 'heading' in text nodes with 'title'
6.) wrap all <u> tags in <b> tags (ie, <u>foo</u> -> <b><u>foo</u></b>)
7.) output the transformed document without changing anything else

The above examples are the primary types of transform I wish to accomplish. Understanding how to do the above will go a long way towards helping me build more complex transforms.

To help clarify/test the examples here is a sample source and output, however I must reiterate that I want to work with arbitrary samples without rewriting the XSLT for each source:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
  <h1>heading</h1>
  <p></p>
  <p><br>line</p>
  <div class="foo bar"><u>baz</u></div>
  <p>untouched</p>
</body>
</html>

output:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
  <h1 newattr="newvalue">title</h1>
  <div class="bar"><b><u>baz</u></b></div>
  <p>untouched</p>
</body>
</html>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    1.) delete the classname ‘foo’ from all divs

    <xsl:template match="div[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' foo ')]">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:attribute name="class">
      <xsl:variable name="s" select="substring-before(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' foo ')" />
      <xsl:variable name="e" select="substring-after(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' foo ')" />
      <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(concat($s, ' ', $e))" />
    </xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="node() | @*[not(self::@class)]" />
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

    2.) delete a node if its empty (ie <p></p>)

    <xsl:template match="*[normalize-space() = '']" />

    3.) delete a

    node if its first child is <br>

    <xsl:template match="p[*[1]/self::br]" />

    4.) add newattr="newvalue" to all <h1>

    <xsl:template match="h1[not(@newattr)]">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:attribute name="newattr">
      <xsl:value-of select="'newvalue'" />
    </xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="node() | @*" />
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

    5.) replace ‘heading’ in text nodes with ‘title’

    <!-- This replaces the first occurrence of 'heading', case-sensitively.
     More generic search-and-replace templates are plenty, here on SO as well as 
     elsewhere on the 'net. -->
<xsl:template match="text()[contains(concat(' ', ., ' '), ' heading ')]">
  <xsl:variable name="s" select="substring-before(concat(' ', ., ' '), ' heading ')" />
  <xsl:variable name="e" select="substring-after(concat(' ', ., ' '), ' title ')" />
  <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(concat($s, ' ', $e))" />
</xsl:template>

    6.) wrap all <u> tags in <b> tags (ie, <u>foo</u> -> <b><u>foo</u></b>)

    <xsl:template match="u[not(parent::*/self::b)]">
  <b>
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node() | @*" />
    </xsl:copy>
  </b>
</xsl:template>

    7.) output the transformed document without changing anything else

    <!-- the identity template copies everything that is not handled by 
     any of the more specific templates above -->
<xsl:template match="node() | @*">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="node() | @*" />
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

    Template order and specificity determine which template “wins” when multiple templates could match the same node.

    More specific means: “Of multiple competing templates, the one that has the more complex matching rule wins”.

    Order means: “Of multiple competing templates with equal specificity, the one later in the XSLT document wins.

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