Question

I am trying to remove nodes from an XML file. Using just one XSLT for each of my XML I need to make decisions in the XSLT based upon the number of children of the document element.

<root>
  <branch>
    <foo>bar</foo>
  </branch>
<root>

should transform into

  <branch>
  </branch>

but

<root>
  <branch>
    <foo>bar</foo>
  </branch>
  <branch>
    <foo>baz</foo>
<root>

into

<root>
  <branch>
  </branch>
  <branch>
  </branch>
<root>

That is, the root element should be removed if its (only) child can act as the new document root of the result XML after applying XSLT. The <foo> nodes have to be removed in every occurence.

Is there a way to perform this operation with a single XSL?

Answer 1

Try

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

<xsl:template match="root[*[2]]">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="root[* and not(*[2])]">
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="branch/foo"/>