RE: [xsl] why doesn't 'self::NODE' work?

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:33 AM 4/15/2003, you wrote:
> In addition to the other answers you have received, let me add a few
> things.  First of all, your template is not returning the results you
> see.  It may very well not even be called.  Instead, your results are
> being returned by the xslt default template, which returns the text
> content of an element of there are no other templates available.
>
> You can demonstrate this by adding a template that matches all elements
> but does nothing -
>
> <xsl:template match='*'/>
>
> Of course, I had to make an assumption about how you were trying to
> invoke your template, but when I added this null template, the output
> vanished.

You do have to take some care when applying medicine like this as a 
debugging technique: it's strong stuff, overriding the default processing 
of *any* element not otherwise matched by a template, so it'll suppress 
output also from higher in the tree if there are nodes there not matched 
with templates of their own.

Use with caution. Better: understand the underlying principles behind what 
Tom is doing --

1. There exist default templates that play a role even if you don't see them
2. These can be overridden with defaults of your own as a method of 
discerning, sometimes, what's really going on.

For example, it's sometimes helpful to use a diagnostic template like this 
(assuming non-standard HTML output is okay for testing purposes ;-) ...

<xsl:template match="*">
  <blink>
    <xsl:value-of select="local-name()"/>
  </blink>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

which will litter the output with the names of nodes not matched by 
templates of their own (and therefore caught by this one). (With apologies 
for the <blink> -- you know what I mean.)

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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