Question

I am creating a html page with xslt to format my xml into a html page, however I am getting a value repeated and I can’t find why, below are my xsl, xml, and html. I have indicated where my repeat value occurs directly below, Thanks for everyone’s help!

<fieldset>
    <legend>Joys of a MAD man</legend><ol> 
            Joys of a MAD man *********** Why is the title repeated? ************
           <li>Slow Moving<a href="./Music/Splintz - Joys of a MAD Man/Slow Moving.mp3"> 
          [Download]
          </a></li> 
</ol></fieldset> 

My XML

<albums>
    <album>
        <title>Joys of a MAD man</title>
        <track>Slow Moving</track>
    </album>
    <album>
        <title>Single</title>
        <track>None</track>
    </album>
</albums>

and finally my xsl

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

    <xsl:template match="album">
        <fieldset>
            <legend><xsl:value-of select="title/text()" /></legend>
            <ol>
                <xsl:apply-templates />
            </ol>
        </fieldset>
    </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="track">        
           <li>
               <xsl:value-of select="text()" />
               <a>
                   <xsl:attribute name="href">
                   <xsl:text>./Music/Splintz - Joys of a MAD Man/</xsl:text>
                   <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
                   <xsl:text>.mp3</xsl:text>
               </xsl:attribute>
               [Download]
               </a>
           </li>
         </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 1

There are built-in default template rules that copy text to the result document.

<xsl:apply-templates/> is short for <xsl:apply-templates select="child::node()"/>.

You used xsl:apply-templates inside the template match for album. When you are “standing” on the album element, title is one of the child nodes that get processed.

The built-in template matched title output it’s text() “Joys of a MAD man” the second time.

There are a number of ways to prevent the title text from being output the second time. You could:

• add an empty template matching title to your stylesheet to prevent the built-in template from matching:
  • <xsl:template match="title"/>
• exclude title from your apply-templates:
  • <xsl:apply-templates select="node()[not(self::title)]"/>
• only apply-templates to the track child elements:
  • <xsl:apply-templates select="track"/>