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Asked: 2026-06-04T02:04:07+00:00

(I have researched this question extensively but not found an adequate solution yet.) I

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(I have researched this question extensively but not found an adequate solution yet.)

I am using XSLT to convert a series of XML files to a ‘tree’-like HTML document, where the parent-child relationships between elements is reflected with indenting.

The solution below works fine but it’s too verbose, and we also need to accommodate adding a few new
elements to the schema in the future.

What’s a good general-purpose solution that will do what we need? I’ve seen recursive solutions online where a “depth” variable is used and is incremented and passed in as a parameter, and used to drive the indenting level; this seems to be a common pattern however I could not get it to work for me.

Thanks.

So my data files look like this:

<document>
  <metadata>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <date>1/1/12</date>
    etc...
  </metadata>
  <trackdata>
    <tracks>
      <track>123</track>
      <track>456</track>
      etc...
  </trackdata>
</document>

And the XSLT (Note the different values for the text-indent at the different levels):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="html" indent="no"/>
    <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
        <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" />
    </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="metadata">
            Metadata: <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="version">
          <div style="text-indent:3em">Version: <xsl:value-of select="text()"/></div>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="date">
          <div style="text-indent:3em">Date: <xsl:value-of select="text()"/></div>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="trackdata">
          Track Data: <xsl:value-of select="text()"/></div>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="tracks">
            <div style="text-indent:3em">Tracks: <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="track">
          <div style="text-indent:6em">Track: <xsl:value-of select="text()"/></div>
        </xsl:template>

etc…

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Try creating a variable to hold the text-indent value. Something like this:

      <xsl:template match="version">
    <xsl:variable name="vIndent" select="count(ancestor::*) * 3"/>    
    <div style="text-indent:{$vIndent}em">Version: <xsl:value-of select="text()"/></div>
  </xsl:template>

    Here’s another full example of usage…

    XML Input (well-formed)

    <document>
  <metadata>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <date>1/1/12</date>
  </metadata>
  <trackdata>
    <tracks>
      <track>123</track>
      <track>456</track>
    </tracks>
  </trackdata>
</document>

    XSLT 1.0

    <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>
  <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

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

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:variable name="vIndent" select="count(ancestor::*) * 3"/>
    <div style="text-indent:{$vIndent}em"><xsl:value-of select="name()"/>: <xsl:apply-templates/></div>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="document">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:template>  

</xsl:stylesheet>

    Raw HTML Output

    <html>
   <div style="text-indent:3em">metadata: 
      <div style="text-indent:6em">version: 1.0</div>
      <div style="text-indent:6em">date: 1/1/12</div>
   </div>
   <div style="text-indent:3em">trackdata: 
      <div style="text-indent:6em">tracks: 
         <div style="text-indent:9em">track: 123</div>
         <div style="text-indent:9em">track: 456</div>
      </div>
   </div>
</html>

    If you wanted the first div to not have an indent, you could change the variable to this:

    <xsl:variable name="vIndent" select="(count(ancestor::*) * 3) - 3"/>
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