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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-18T10:01:09+00:00

I’m aware that when it comes to .NET (or at least the version of

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I’m aware that when it comes to .NET (or at least the version of .NET I’m on), if I want to query data from an XML document that has a non-default namespace, I have at least two choices:

1. use the local-name() function before referencing a
node in the xpath expression.

2. work with the XmlNamespaceManager class and assign prefixes
that then need to be referenced in the xpath expression.

Lately I have been working with the XSLCompiledTransform class, and have experienced similar problems when it comes to reading data from XML files with non-default namespaces.

Since the people who will be writing the actual XSL files might not know that they need to use the local-name() function, and have no control over the XML files they will be working with, what can I do, codewise, in order to endure that xpath expressions of the form (/node0/node1/node2/etc) are interpreted properly by the XSLCompiledTransform class?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If the people writing the XSLT code don’t know what namespaces will be used in the XML instances, then they are working in the dark – it’s much the same (in fact exactly the same) as not knowing what local names will be used, because the element name is in two parts, a URI and a local name, and you need to know both. If you don’t know the full name in advance, you can always select elements by wildcard and discover their name – which is essentially what you are doing when you use local-name() – but that’s hard work.

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