Question

I have the following XML document:

<root someAttribute="someValue" />

Now I want to add a tag using XSLT, so that the document will look like this:

<root someAttribute="someValue">
  <item>TEXT</item>
</root>

If I repeat to use the XSLT once more it should just add another item:

<root someAttribute="someValue">
  <item>TEXT</item>
  <item>TEXT</item>
</root>

It sound’s so easy, does it not? Here is the best I got after trying a ton of things:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0" >
    <xsl:param name="message" />

    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8"/>

        <xsl:template match="/*">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:copy-of select="*"/>
            <item>
                <xsl:value-of select="$message" />
            </item>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

It does /nearly/ what I have asked for, except that it “forgets” the attributes of the root element. I have found a number of other solutions here on stackoverflow and elsewhere that have in common with my solution that they loose the attributes of the root element. How can I fix that?

Answer 1

You’re currently transforming only child nodes, not attributes.

<xsl:template match="root">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:copy-of select="node()|@*"/> <!-- now does attrs too -->
        <item>
            <xsl:value-of select="$message" />
        </item>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>