Question

I have an Xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
  <child>
    <gc>gc1Value</gc>
  </child>
  <child>child2Value</child>
  <child>
    <gc>gc2Value</gc>
    <gc>gc3Value</gc>
    <gc>
      <ggc>ggcValue</ggc>
      <ggc>ggcValue</ggc>
    </gc>
  </child>
</root>

and an Xslt file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
      <root>
      <xsl:for-each select="root/child">
        <xsl:if test=".!=''">
          <value>
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
          </value>
        </xsl:if>
        <xsl:for-each select="root/child/gc">
          <xsl:if test=".!=''">
            <value>
              <xsl:value-of select="."/>
            </value>
          </xsl:if>
          <xsl:for-each select="root/child/gc/ggc">
            <xsl:if test=".!=''">
              <value>
                <xsl:value-of select="."/>
              </value>
            </xsl:if>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </xsl:for-each>
      </root>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I’m expecting to see this kind of result:

<root>
  <value>gc1Value</value>
  <value>child2Value</value>
  <value>gc2Value</value>
  <value>gc3Value</value>
  <value>ggcValue</value>
  <value>ggcValue</value>
</root>

but I’m getting this result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
  <value>
    gc1Value
  </value>
  <value>child2Value</value>
  <value>
    gc2Value
    gc3Value

      ggcValue
      ggcValue

  </value>
</root>

I thought that by using . for the select this would only select the current node’s value, but it appears to be getting the values from the children as well. What should I do instead?

Answer 1

The problem is in here:

    <xsl:if test="gc!=''">
      <value>
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
      </value>
    </xsl:if>

“.” will get the current node and all its children.

Use node::text() [ ie. select=”text()” ] if you only want the text. Also I would advise using ‘string-length(node) != 0’ and the likes instead of ”,