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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T19:36:06+00:00

How do I transform a XML doc using XSTL when I don’t know the

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How do I transform a XML doc using XSTL when I don’t know the names of the nodes. So basically it should work universally, with any XML document.

Let’s say I got this XML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="transform.xsl" type="text/xsl" ?>
<!DOCTYPE cinema [
<!ELEMENT a (b*)>
<!ELEMENT b (c,d,e)>
<!ELEMENT c (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT d (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT e (#PCDATA)>
]>

<cinema>
<movie>
    <actor>Some actor</actor>
    <title>Some title</title>
    <year>Some year</year>
</movie>
</cinema>

How would I create an HTML table out of this? I know I can match the root element like this:

<xsl:template match="/">

Then I select all movies like this:

<xsl:for-each select="/*/*">

But how to I know get one row for each movie with three columns for actor, title & year? Especially since the XML file (movie) should be able to maybe only have 2 children or 5.

+++EDIT+++

If I do this:

<tr>
    <td><xsl:value-of select="."/></td>
</tr>

I get each movie’s details in one row. This is almost close to what I want to achieve. But how to I spread out the movie details over three columns in that row?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you know you will always have three levels of elements (root, children and grandchildren) then something like this should do it:

    <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
  <xsl:output method="html" />

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html><body><xsl:apply-templates /></body></html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="/*">
    <table><xsl:apply-templates /></table>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="/*/*">
    <tr><xsl:apply-templates /></tr>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="/*/*/*">
    <td><xsl:apply-templates /></td>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

    The / template matches the document node, /* matches first-level element children of the document node (i.e. the root element of the document), /*/* matches second-level children, etc.

    <xsl:apply-templates/> (with no select) will apply matching templates to all the child nodes of the current node, which includes child elements, text nodes, comments and processing instructions. As a result, you may need the root template to be

      <xsl:template match="/">
    <html><body><xsl:apply-templates select="*" /></body></html>
  </xsl:template>

    to select only child elements.

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