Question

How do I write an XSLT template that takes all non “meta” and “answer” elements and deposits them into a “my_question” template? So, for example, given the below XML …

<question>
    <meta>
        ...
    </meta>
    <para />
    <para>Why?</para>
    <answer weight="1" correctness="0">
        ...
    </answer>
    <answer weight="1" correctness="0">
        ...
    </answer>
    <answer weight="1" correctness="100">
        ...
    </answer>
    <answer weight="1" correctness="0">
        ...
    </answer>
</question>

I would want the result to be

<my_question>
    <para />
    <para>Why?</para>        
</my_question>

Answer 1

The identity template is your friend

<xsl:stylesheet
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 version="2.0">

 <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes"/>

 <xsl:template match="/">
     <my_question>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="question"/>
     </my_question>
 </xsl:template>

 <!-- ignores the specified elements. Adjust for nesting if necessary. -->
 <xsl:template match="meta | answer"/>

 <!-- Pass everything else -->
 <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
 <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
 </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>