RE: [xsl] Embedding html within xml

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:08 PM 3/11/2004, it was written:
> Hmm... What doesn't work? In the code below you should be able to just 
> change the
> <xsl:value-of select="."/> to <xsl:copy-of select="./node()"/>

And ... today's little XPath lesson...:

[0] "." is short for "self::node()"

[1a] select="node()" is short for select="child::node()"
     (select all child nodes of the context node)

[1b] select="./node()" is short for select="self::node()/child::node()"
     (select all child nodes of the context node itself)

These are functionally equivalent, which makes this case very different 
from another apparently similar pairing:

[2a] select="//node()" is short for
     select="/descendant-or-self::node()/child::node()"

[2b] select=".//node()" is short for
     select="self::node()/descendant-or-self::node()/child::node()"

That is, [2a] is the same as "/descendant::node()" (node descendants of the 
root), while [2b] is the same as "self::node()/descendant::node()" (node 
descendants of the context node) -- not the same thing at all.

Back to the thread ... if you want to copy the current node (with all 
descendants), not just its children (with theirs), that's

<xsl:copy-of select="."/> (expands as in [0])

... or perhaps you really want to copy the node's children (with all 
descendants) but not the node itself: you can do this with copy-of 
select="node()" [1a].

I say "with all descendants" because that's what copy-of does. For the OP, 
that's how the <a> node in the source gets included when its parent's 
template says to copy node children.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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