Table of contents

Appendices

15 Fallback

< fallback>
   <-- Content: -->
< /fallback>

Normally, instantiating an xsl:fallback element does nothing. However, when an XSLT processor performs fallback for an instruction element, if the instruction element has one or more xsl:fallback children, then the content of each of the xsl:fallback children must be instantiated in sequence; otherwise, an error must be signaled. The content of an xsl:fallback element is a template.

The following functions can be used with the xsl:choose and xsl:if instructions to explicitly control how a stylesheet should behave if particular elements or functions are not available.

boolean element-available(string)

The argument must evaluate to a string that is a QName. The QName is expanded into an expanded-name using the namespace declarations in scope for the expression. The element-available function returns true if and only if the expanded-name is the name of an instruction. If the expanded-name has a namespace URI equal to the XSLT namespace URI, then it refers to an element defined by XSLT. Otherwise, it refers to an extension element. If the expanded-name has a null namespace URI, the element-available function will return false.

boolean function-available(string)

The argument must evaluate to a string that is a QName. The QName is expanded into an expanded-name using the namespace declarations in scope for the expression. The function-available function returns true if and only if the expanded-name is the name of a function in the function library. If the expanded-name has a non-null namespace URI, then it refers to an extension function; otherwise, it refers to a function defined by XPath or XSLT.