Question

I’m using xslt to create onscreen pdf’s from xml and I need to hide an xref but only when it appears within a title element.

For example:

<title><i>Naseem Akhtar v Birmingham City Council</i> [2011] EWCA Civ 383 <xref href="#Public_PUBLICLAW_PLLR_2011PLLR002">Click here for transcript</xref></title>

Here I would want to just display

Naseem Akhtar v Birmingham City Council</i> [2011] EWCA Civ 383

The value “Click here for transcript” remains contstant

I have tried the following wild stabs in the dark:

<xsl:template match="title">
 <xsl:if test="xref=href">
  <fo:block
    font-weight="bold"
    text-transform="uppercase">

    <xsl:apply-templates />
  </fo:block>
 </xsl:if>
</xsl:template> 

and also

<xsl:template match="title">
    <xsl:if test="*[contains(@class,' topic/xref ')][not(@href='')]">
  <fo:block
    font-weight="bold"
    text-transform="uppercase">

     <xsl:apply-templates />

  </fo:block>
   </xsl:if>
</xsl:template> 

but neither catch the xref.

Could someone please point me in the right direction please.

Thanks.

Answer 1

This short and simple transformation (no conditionals at al and only a single template):

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

 <xsl:template match="title/xref"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on the provided XML document:

<title>
    <i>Naseem Akhtar v Birmingham City Council</i> [2011] EWCA Civ 383 
    <xref href="#Public_PUBLICLAW_PLLR_2011PLLR002">Click here for transcript</xref>
</title>

produces the wanted, correct result:

Naseem Akhtar v Birmingham City Council [2011] EWCA Civ 383 

Explanation:

1. If no templates are specified, an XSLT processor uses the built-in XSLT templates and the summary result of doing so is outputting all text nodes in document order.

2. We alter the effect of 1. above by overriding the built-in template that matches any element — for any xref element that is a child of title. The overriding template has empty body, which in effect “deletes” the content of this element.