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Answer 1

+1 A:

<xsl:apply-templates/> matches all the child nodes of the current node.

In the e.g.

<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <body>
  <h2>My CD Collection</h2>  
  <xsl:apply-templates/>  
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

the current node (/) is catalog (root node). Hence will apply the templates that match all the child nodes (cd, title, artist, country, ...) if they exist.

Best way for you to understand would be to change the xslt in the example and observe the various outputs you get.

One way would be remove all the other 3 templates (cd, artist & title) and run the xslt again.

Rashmi Pandit 2009-12-31 08:35:23

Thanks for your help, I have updated my further confusions in EDIT1 section of my post, any further comments?

George2 2010-01-01 05:28:03

Answer 2

+1 A:

In case you want to apply templates to the current element, use:

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

Wilfred Springer 2009-12-31 09:07:42

Thanks for your help, I have updated my further confusions in EDIT1 section of my post, any further comments?

George2 2010-01-01 05:25:49

Answer 3

+1 A:

my question is whether it is applied to current element or to child nodes or both?

That depends on whether there is a select attribute in the apply-templates element.

If it's just <xsl:apply-templates/> then the template(s) that match the current element's child nodes will get applied. In the case from w3Schools this means that cd, title and artist all get applied.

However if you was to do something like <xsl:apply-templates select="/catalog/cd/artist"/> instead then only that element would get the template applied to it.

James 2009-12-31 09:30:33

Thanks for your help, I have updated my further confusions in EDIT1 section of my post, any further comments?

George2 2010-01-01 05:27:31

Answer 4

+1 A:

The w3schools documentation is not all it's cracked up to be, and I agree, it's quite misleading in this case.

The spec says:

In the absence of a select attribute, the xsl:apply-templates instruction processes all of the children of the current node, including text nodes.

"Children" in XML always means direct children. Children's children etc are called "descendents".

The "current node" means exactly that. It's determined by the context in which the apply-templates instruction appears.

So initially you might have:

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

Here the current node is the document node, and the apply-templates will act on the children to that, i.e. the top level element of the XML.

In this sample:

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

the current node will be a node somewhere in the XML called "cd" and the apply-templates will act on the direct children of that.

Note that this need not apply to every element called "cd", nor in fact need it apply to any element called "cd", that will depend on how the other templates in the XSLT process the input XML. All it says is that whenever that template is matched, the current node will be a "cd" node.

Alohci 2009-12-31 17:47:28

Thanks for your help, I have updated my further confusions in EDIT1 section of my post, any further comments?

George2 2010-01-01 05:25:13

In your example, the current node is the Document Node. It's neither virtual nor abstract. It's the topmost node of the DOM and the parent of the catalog element. So the apply-templates instruction will select just the one and only "catalog" element.

Alohci 2010-01-01 11:22:37

Thanks, question answered!

George2 2010-01-01 16:01:58

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