Question

I’m looking for a simpler, more elegant way to replace text in XML. For a source XML like:

<A>
 <B>
  <Name>ThisOne</Name>
  <Target>abc</Target>
 </B>
 <B>
  <Name>NotThisOne</Name>
  <Target>abc</Target>
 </B>
 <B>
  <Name>ThisOne</Name>
  <Target>def</Target>
 </B>
</A>

I want to change the text of all Target elements that have the Name of “ThisOne” to “xyz”.

The result would be:

<A>
 <B>
  <Name>ThisOne</Name>
  <Target>xyz</Target>     <--   Changed.
 </B>
 <B>
  <Name>NotThisOne</Name>
  <Target>abc</Target>
 </B>
 <B>
  <Name>ThisOne</Name>
  <Target>xyz</Target>     <--   Changed.
 </B>
</A>

I accomplished this with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="B/Target">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="../Name/text()='ThisOne'"><Target>xyz</Target></xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise><Target><xsl:value-of select="text()"/></Target></xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I was thinking this could be done with <xsl:template match=”B/Target/text()”>, so I could just replace the text and not the whole element, but I couldn’t figure out the rest.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This stylesheet:

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

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

  <xsl:template match="B[Name='ThisOne']/Target/text()">
    <xsl:text>xyz</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

using your XML input produces:

<A>
  <B>
    <Name>ThisOne</Name>
    <Target>xyz</Target>
  </B>
  <B>
    <Name>NotThisOne</Name>
    <Target>abc</Target>
  </B>
  <B>
    <Name>ThisOne</Name>
    <Target>xyz</Target>
  </B>
</A>