Question

What XSLT would I use to extract some nodes to output, ignoring others, when the nodes to be be extracted are some times nested nodes to be ignored?

Consider:

<alpha_top>This prints.
  <beta>This doesn't.
    <alpha_bottom>This too prints.</alpha_bottom>
  </beta>
</alpha_top>

I want a transform that produces:

<alpha_top>This prints.
    <alpha_bottom>This too prints.</alpha_bottom>
</alpha_top>

This answer shows how to select nodes based on the presence of a string in the element tag name.

Answer 1

Ok, here is a better way

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

<xsl:template match="beta">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="*"></xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

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

</xsl:stylesheet>

This basically does an identity transform, but for the element you don’t want to include I removed the xsl:copy and only applied templates on the child elements.