Default Template Rules

Take a look at the following XSLT stylesheet; it has rules that match the root node, <PLANETS> nodes, and <PLANET> nodes:

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

    <xsl:template match="/"> 
        <HTML> 
            <xsl:apply-templates/> 
        </HTML> 
    </xsl:template> 

    <xsl:template match="PLANETS"> 
        <xsl:apply-templates/> 
    </xsl:template> 

    <xsl:template match="PLANET"> 
        <P> 
            <xsl:value-of select="NAME"/> 
        </P> 
    </xsl:template> 

</xsl:stylesheet>

Note the rule for the <PLANETS> element; that rule simply uses <xsl:apply-templates> to apply templates to all its child nodes. However, there is a default rule in template processing that if you don’t supply a rule for an element, <apply-templates/> ...

Get Inside XSLT now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial