Question

Can anyone explain to me why the following xslt:

<xsl:if test="EventDocument">

Does not pickup this xml tag?

<EventDocument xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.itron.com/ItronInternalXsd/1.0/">

it works when I delete the attributes from the tag, which makes no sense to me.

I.E. the above test passes when i modify the input to be:

<EventDocument>

I’m using xslt 2.0 (saxon parser) Thanks in advance

Answer 1

xmlns is “reserved attribute” – it is definition of mapping of namespace prefix to full node namespace. Covered in details in What does "xmlns" in XML mean?

I.e. actual name of the node in your case is "http://www.itron.com/ItronInternalXsd/1.0/" EventDocument, but you trying to select "" EventDocument (Node with name “EventDocument” and empty namespace).

Depending on your XPath engine you need either

• pass mapping of your namespace prefixes to namespaces
• use explicit matching to namespace and node names. *[namespace-uri()="http://www.itron.com/ItronInternalXsd/1.0/" and local-name()=="EventDocument"]
• cheat and just match node names *[local-name()=="EventDocument"]

(local-name and namespace-uri covered in http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/#section-Node-Set-Functions).