RE: [xsl] template matching

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger,

At 10:52 AM 2/5/2004, you wrote:
> Sorry - I wasn't being very clear. I was suprised to get output without an 
> <xsl:value-of select="."/>

<xsl:value-of select="."/> is in the built-in default template for text 
nodes, and since the built-in template for element nodes instructs to 
<xsl:apply-templates select="child::node()"/>, even a blank or "null" 
stylesheet (that is, one containing no explicit templates at all) *will* 
give you your content.

It's actually a very worthwhile exercise for a beginner to run a blank 
stylesheet against a document, inspect the output, and from there to 
enhance the stylesheet with templates to match element nodes *starting at 
the bottom* (not going top down), checking the results of each enhancement 
as you go. The results, which many XSLT neophytes (especially those used to 
other programming languages) find to be counter-intuitive, are very 
instructive. You can't really explain them at all until you learn the 
processing model. If you do understand the processing model, you can likely 
predict what'll happen with every new template.

To get you started (should you or anyone choose to spend a little free time 
with this fun self-study), I provide you with a blank starter stylesheet:

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

</xsl:stylesheet>

Run this on your favorite XML document and see....

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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