Table of contents

Appendices

5.4 Applying Template Rules

< apply-templates
   select= node-set-expression
   mode= qname >
   <-- Content: * sort with-param -->
< /apply-templates>

This example creates a block for a chapter element and then processes its immediate children.

<xsl:template match="chapter">
  <fo:block>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </fo:block>
</xsl:template>

In the absence of a select attribute, the xsl:apply-templates instruction processes all of the children of the current node, including text nodes. However, text nodes that have been stripped as specified in [Whitespace Stripping] will not be processed. If stripping of whitespace nodes has not been enabled for an element, then all whitespace in the content of the element will be processed as text, and thus whitespace between child elements will count in determining the position of a child element as returned by the position function.

A select attribute can be used to process nodes selected by an expression instead of processing all children. The value of the select attribute is an Expression. The expression must evaluate to a node-set. The selected set of nodes is processed in document order, unless a sorting specification is present (see [Sorting]). The following example processes all of the author children of the author-group:

<xsl:template match="author-group">
  <fo:inline-sequence>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="author"/>
  </fo:inline-sequence>
</xsl:template>

The following example processes all of the given-names of the authors that are children of author-group:

<xsl:template match="author-group">
  <fo:inline-sequence>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="author/given-name"/>
  </fo:inline-sequence>
</xsl:template>

This example processes all of the heading descendant elements of the book element.

<xsl:template match="book">
  <fo:block>
    <xsl:apply-templates select=".//heading"/>
  </fo:block>
</xsl:template>

It is also possible to process elements that are not descendants of the current node. This example assumes that a department element has group children and employee descendants. It finds an employee's department and then processes the group children of the department.

<xsl:template match="employee">
  <fo:block>
    Employee <xsl:apply-templates select="name"/> belongs to group
    <xsl:apply-templates select="ancestor::department/group"/>
  </fo:block>
</xsl:template>

Multiple xsl:apply-templates elements can be used within a single template to do simple reordering. The following example creates two HTML tables. The first table is filled with domestic sales while the second table is filled with foreign sales.

<xsl:template match="product">
  <table>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="sales/domestic"/>
  </table>
  <table>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="sales/foreign"/>
  </table>
</xsl:template>

NOTE: 

It is possible for there to be two matching descendants where one is a descendant of the other. This case is not treated specially: both descendants will be processed as usual. For example, given a source document

<doc><div><div></div></div></doc>

the rule

<xsl:template match="doc">
  <xsl:apply-templates select=".//div"/>
</xsl:template>

will process both the outer div and inner div elements.

NOTE: 

Typically, xsl:apply-templates is used to process only nodes that are descendants of the current node. Such use of xsl:apply-templates cannot result in non-terminating processing loops. However, when xsl:apply-templates is used to process elements that are not descendants of the current node, the possibility arises of non-terminating loops. For example,

<xsl:template match="foo">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="."/>
</xsl:template>

Implementations may be able to detect such loops in some cases, but the possibility exists that a stylesheet may enter a non-terminating loop that an implementation is unable to detect. This may present a denial of service security risk.