Question

I am starting doing with xml and xslt, I also read some tutorials etc.. and according these as I understand this xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>  
<Menu>  
    <Accounts type="menu" label="Accounts">  
        <ListUsers type="cmd" label="List users">  
            <cmd>HAha</cmd>  
        </ListUsers>  
        <AddUsers type="cmd" label="Add users">  
            <cmd></cmd>  
        </AddUsers>  
        <DeleteUsers type="cmd" label="Delete users">  
            <cmd></cmd>  
        </DeleteUsers>  
    </Accounts>  
    <Hardware type="menu" label="Hardware">  
        <ListDisks type="cmd" label="List disks">  
            <cmd></cmd>  
        </ListDisks>  
    </Hardware>  
    <Network type="menu" label="Network"></Network>  
    <Filesystem type="menu" label="Filesystem"></Filesystem>  
</Menu>

and this xslt:

<?xml version="1.0"?>  
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">  
<xsl:template match="/*">   
    <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>  
</xsl:template>  
<xsl:template match="*">  
    <div><xsl:value-of select="@label"/></div>  
</xsl:template>   
</xsl:stylesheet>

Should output labels of all elements, but it didn’t… What I am missing, could you correct and explain me please, thanks.

Answer 1

There are two problems with this code:

<xsl:template match="*">       
  <div>
    <xsl:value-of select="@label"/>
  </div>   
</xsl:template>

1. Elements that aren’t children of the top element (or the top element itself) are not processed at all. To correct this, a new instruction should be appended to the body of the template — for example: <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>

2. Elements that don’t have a label attribute will generate an empty <div>. This can be avoided if a proper template match pattern is used so that the template is selected only for elements that do have this attribute.

Here is a complete solution and it can be as short and simple as:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>

 <xsl:template match="*[@label]">
     <div><xsl:value-of select="@label"/></div>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>
 </xsl:template>
 <xsl:template match="text()"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>

When this transformation is applied on the provided XML document:

<Menu>
    <Accounts type="menu" label="Accounts">
        <ListUsers type="cmd" label="List users">
            <cmd>HAha</cmd>
        </ListUsers>
        <AddUsers type="cmd" label="Add users">
            <cmd></cmd>
        </AddUsers>
        <DeleteUsers type="cmd" label="Delete users">
            <cmd></cmd>
        </DeleteUsers>
    </Accounts>
    <Hardware type="menu" label="Hardware">
        <ListDisks type="cmd" label="List disks">
            <cmd></cmd>
        </ListDisks>
    </Hardware>
    <Network type="menu" label="Network"></Network>
    <Filesystem type="menu" label="Filesystem"></Filesystem>
</Menu>

the wanted, correct result is produced:

<div>Accounts</div>
<div>List users</div>
<div>Add users</div>
<div>Delete users</div>
<div>Hardware</div>
<div>List disks</div>
<div>Network</div>
<div>Filesystem</div>