Question

I have an XML document of the following kind:

<item>
  <item>
    <item>
     ... (same elements <item> ... </item> here) 
    </item>
  </item>
</item>

… and the following XSL-transform:

<xsl:template match="item"><xsl:text>
open</xsl:text>
 <xsl:apply-templates/><xsl:text>
close</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>

What I obtain is:

open
open
open
close
close
close

So I wonder whether it is possible to somehow get an output with indents like this:

open
   open
      open
      close
   close
close

Thanks for your help!

P.S. It should be definitely possible to obtain what I want to by letting output method of the transformation to be HTML. However, I need to make indents “directly” in the text, not using any kind of HTML’s lists etc.

Answer 1

This transformation:

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

 <xsl:template match="item">
  <xsl:param name="pIndent" select="'  '"/>

  <xsl:value-of select="concat('&#xA;', $pIndent, 'open')"/>

  <xsl:apply-templates>
   <xsl:with-param name="pIndent"
        select="concat($pIndent, '  ')"/>
  </xsl:apply-templates>

  <xsl:value-of select="concat('&#xA;', $pIndent, 'close')"/>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="node()[not(self::item)]">
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on the provided XML document:

<item>
    <item>
        <item>      ...
            <item> ... </item>
        </item>
    </item>
</item>

produces the wanted, indented output:

  open
    open
      open
        open
        close
      close
    close
  close

Explanation:

The $pIndent parameter is used to hold the string of whitespace to be prepended to the non-white space output. Whenever an xsl:apply-templates is used, the value passed with this parameter is expanded by two spaces.