Question

I have created a little application to convert XML which I get out of our system, to a new XML format needed for customers using XSLT. The problem is, I can’t seem to be able to retrieve the values of the XML nodes, they’re just all empty.

Here is my 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="/">
    <test>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="SourceEndpoint" />
    </test>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="SourceEndpoint">
    <InvoiceAmount>
      <xsl:value-of select="." />
    </InvoiceAmount>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

My Original XML does have an node called SourceEndpoint so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here?

I also tried: <xsl:value-of select="Envelope/Header/SourceEndpoint" /> instead of a template but I got the same result

Edit

Here is a snippet my Original XML:

<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <MessageId>{11EA62F5-543A-4483-B216-91E526AE2319}</MessageId> 
    <SourceEndpoint>Test</SourceEndpoint> 
    <DestinationEndpoint>TestInvoice</DestinationEndpoint> 
  </Header>
</Envelope>

Envelope is the root of the whole file

In the Transformed XML, test looks like: <test />

Answer 1

The XML file is in a default namespace — not in the “null” namespace. This makes a huge difference.

Search for XPath and default namespace and you’ll find numerous good answers.

In essence, you must define the same namespace in the XSLT transformation associating a prefix (say “x”) to it.

Then in any XPath expression (a match pattern is a kind of XPath expression) use x:someName instead of someName.

One additional issue with the provided code is that it attempts to access the element SourceEndpoint as the top element of the document — and the top element in this case has a different name.

Correcting these two issues, we get the following transformation:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/Message"
 exclude-result-prefixes="x">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <test>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="/*/*/x:SourceEndpoint" />
        </test>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="x:SourceEndpoint">
        <InvoiceAmount>
            <xsl:value-of select="." />
        </InvoiceAmount>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

When this transformation is applied on the provided XML document:

<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/Message">
    <Header>
        <MessageId>{11EA62F5-543A-4483-B216-91E526AE2319}</MessageId>
        <SourceEndpoint>Test</SourceEndpoint>
        <DestinationEndpoint>TestInvoice</DestinationEndpoint>
    </Header>
</Envelope>

the wanted, correct result is produced:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<test>
   <InvoiceAmount>Test</InvoiceAmount>
</test>