Question

Using XSLT, how can one remove all the text nodes from HTML, but keep the element tags, attribute names, and attribute values?

<table id="preserve-this-value">
  <caption>Lose this text node</caption>

Transformation:

<table id="preserve-this-value">
  <caption></caption>

Thanks 🙂

Answer 1

Use this template:

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

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

  <xsl:template match="text()"/>

</xsl:stylesheet>

It copies all nodes (elements, attributes) except text nodes.