Matching Attributes

As Chapter 3, Creating and Using Templates, showed, you can match attributes if you preface their names with an @ . Youve already worked with the UNITS attribute that most of the children of <PLANET> elements support:

 <PLANET>          <NAME>Earth</NAME>          <MASS UNITS="(Earth = 1)">1</MASS>          <DAY UNITS="days">1</DAY>          <RADIUS UNITS="miles">2107</RADIUS>          <DENSITY UNITS="(Earth = 1)">1</DENSITY>          <DISTANCE UNITS="million miles">128.4</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion-->  </PLANET>

To recover the units and display them as well as the values for the mass and so on, you can match the UNITS attribute with @UNITS , as follows :

Listing 4.1 Matching Attributes

 <?xml version="1.0"?>  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">      <xsl:template match="/PLANETS">          <HTML>              <HEAD>              .              .              .              </HEAD>              <BODY>              .              .              .              </BODY>          </HTML>      </xsl:template>      <xsl:template match="PLANET">         <TR>            <TD><xsl:value-of select="NAME"/></TD>            <TD><xsl:apply-templates select="MASS"/></TD>            <TD><xsl:apply-templates select="RADIUS"/></TD>         </TR>     </xsl:template>      <xsl:template match="MASS">          <xsl:value-of select="."/>          <xsl:text> </xsl:text>          <xsl:value-of select="@UNITS"/>      </xsl:template>      <xsl:template match="RADIUS">          <xsl:value-of select="."/>          <xsl:text> </xsl:text>          <xsl:value-of select="@UNITS"/>      </xsl:template>      <xsl:template match="DAY">          <xsl:value-of select="."/>          <xsl:text> </xsl:text>          <xsl:value-of select="@UNITS"/>      </xsl:template>  </xsl:stylesheet>

Now the resulting HTML table includes not only values, but also their units of measurement:

 <HTML>      <HEAD>          <TITLE>              The Planets Table          </TITLE>      </HEAD>      <BODY>          <H1>              The Planets Table          </H1>          <TABLE>              <TR>               .               .               .              <TR>                  <TD>Mercury</TD>                  <TD>.0553 (Earth = 1)</TD>                  <TD>1516 miles</TD>              </TR>              <TR>                  <TD>Venus</TD>                  <TD>.815 (Earth = 1)</TD>                  <TD>3716 miles</TD>              </TR>              .              .              .          </TABLE>      </BODY>  </HTML>

You also can use the @* wildcard to select all attributes of an element. For example, "PLANET/@*" selects all attributes of <PLANET> elements.