So far in this chapter, Ive been manipulating elements to generate the result documents, but you can similarly work with attributes as well. (If you recall, attributes are name /value pairs that describe the element it is associated with.)
Just as I showed you in the preceding section how to remove an element, an attribute can also be omitted from the result document in a variety of ways. One common technique is to reconstruct the element in a template rule, leaving behind any attributes you dont want to include. In the following stylesheet, I create a new derivative of coffee-light.xml that omits the origin attribute from the coffee element:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <!-- Copy coffee but don't include the origin attribute --> <xsl:template match="coffee"> <coffee name="{@name}"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </coffee> </xsl:template> <!-- Copy everything else over --> <xsl:template match="@*node()"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> The result is shown here:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <coffee name="Guatemalan Express"> <taste>Mild and Bland</taste> <price>11.99</price> <availability>Year-round</availability> <bestwith>Breakfast</bestwith> </coffee>
A second example that follows highlights another technique to remove attributes. Suppose I want to remove the attributes from the region element. I can do this with the following XSLT code:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <!-- Copy region, but not its attributes --> <xsl:template match="region"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="*node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> <!-- Copy everything else over --> <xsl:template match="@*node()"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>
Looking closer at the stylesheet, the first template copies the region tags to the result document with xsl:copy . It also uses xsl:apply-templates to add its content to the output as well. However, the select attribute value of xsl:apply-templates selects elements and other nodes, but it specifically does not include attributes. The attribute-free result for region is shown here:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><coffees> <region> <coffee name="Guatemalan Express" origin="Guatemala"> <taste>Mild and Bland</taste> <price>11.99</price> <availability>Year-round</availability> <bestwith>Breakfast</bestwith> </coffee> <coffee name="Costa Rican Deacon" origin="Costa Rica"> <taste>Solid Yet Understated</taste> <price>12.99</price> <availability>Year-round</availability> <bestwith>Dessert</bestwith> </coffee> </region> <region> <coffee name="Ethiopian Sunset Supremo" origin="Ethiopia"> <taste>Exotic and Untamed</taste> <price>14.99</price> <availability>Limited</availability> <bestwith>Chocolate</bestwith> </coffee> <coffee name="Kenyan Elephantismo" origin="Kenya"> <taste>Thick And Chewy</taste> <price>9.99</price> <availability>Year-round</availability> <bestwith>ElephantEars</bestwith> </coffee> </region> </coffees>
