accessing xml attributes in xsl

Question

i've this xml code:

<title xml:lang="ar">أربيك</title>
<title xml:lang="en">English</title>

which i'm formatting in xsl:

<div class="title">
        <xsl:value-of select="root/title"/>
</div>

however, this^ only displays the arabic title, and not the english one. i tried this code:

<div class="title">
        <xsl:attribute name="xml:lang"><xsl:value-of select="root/title"/> </xsl:attribute>
</div>

but with this^ code, it doesn't display the titles at all. what is the correct way to display both the english and the arabic titles?

Answer 1

You could try for-each:

<xsl:for-each select="root/title">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>

I am not 100% sure but I think value-of will only get the value of one element, and if several are selected, it just gets the value of the first one.

Answer 2

A title template will be the best way to do this:

<xsl:template match="title">
  <div class="title">
    <xsl:value-of select="." />
  </div>
</xsl:template>

You could use xsl:for-each to achieve the same, but a template is the idiomatic xsl.

Answer 3

The following will work.

Source XML:

$xmlDoc = <<< XML
<titles>
    <title xml:lang="ar">أربيك</title>
    <title xml:lang="en">English</title>
</titles>
XML;

XSL Stylesheet with template matching any title nodes in the document

$xslDoc = <<< XSL
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;

    <xsl:template match="/">
           <h1>Titles</h1>
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="title">
        <div class="{@xml:lang} title">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </div>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
XSL;

And transformation with PHP:

$xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->loadXML($xmlDoc);
$xsl = new DOMDocument;
$xsl->loadXML($xslDoc);
$proc = new XSLTProcessor;
$proc->importStyleSheet($xsl);
echo $proc->transformToXML($xml);

will give:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<h1>Titles</h1>
    <div class="ar title">أربيك</div>
    <div class="en title">English</div>

EDIT: modified title template to use the xml:lang attribute as class attribute, so you can style it with CSS. If you need more complex styling, write another template that matches the attribute (as shown by Volker).

Answer 4

You can have more than one template that matches a specific node. In that case the matching templates are prioritized and only the template with the highest priority is used. If you don't specifically set a priority there are built-in rules to determine the priority, see 5.5 Conflict Resolution for Template Rules.

E.g. if you have the two templates

1. <xsl:template match="title">...</xsl:template>
2. <xsl:template match="title[@xml:lang='ar']">...</xsl:template>

they both match <title xml:lang="ar">أربيك</title>.
But the one testing the xml:lang attribute (template #2) is "more specific than the most common kind of pattern" and gets a higher priority than the template that simply matches all <title> elements (template #1). Therefore template #2 is selected.
For <title xml:lang="en">title 2</title> there is only one matching template (template #1) which is therefore selected.

self-contained example:

<?php
$proc = <<< XSL
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="title">
    <h2>template #1: <xsl:value-of select="."/></h2>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="title[@xml:lang='ar']">
    <h1>template #2: <xsl:value-of select="."/></h1>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
XSL;
$proc = getProcessor($proc);

$doc = <<< XML
<titles>
    <title xml:lang="ar">أربيك</title>
    <title xml:lang="en">english title</title>
</titles>
XML;
$doc = getDocument($doc);

echo $proc->transformToXML($doc);


function getDocument($xml) {
  $doc = new DOMDocument;
  $doc->loadxml($xml);
  return $doc;
}

function getProcessor($xml) {
  $proc = new XSLTProcessor;
  $proc->importStylesheet(getDocument($xml));
  return $proc;
}

prints

<?xml version="1.0"?>

    <h1>template #2: أربيك</h1>
    <h2>template #1: english title</h2>

Answer 5

Probably the shortest, complete solution, that is also completely in the spirit of XSLT is the following:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="title">
    <div class="title">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </div>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when this transformation is applied on the following XML document (just wrapping the provided XML fragment into a single top element):

<titles>
    <title xml:lang="ar">أربيك</title>
    <title xml:lang="en">English</title>
</titles>

the wanted result is produced:

<div class="title">أربيك</div>
<div class="title">English</div>

Answer 6

I think that your first attempt was in the right direction: just copy the @xml:lang and apply CSS style later. So this stylesheet:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
    <xsl:template match="titles">
        <html>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="title">
        <div class="title">
            <xsl:copy-of select="@xml:lang"/>
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </div>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

With proper input (from Dimitre):

<titles>
    <title xml:lang="ar">أربيك</title>
    <title xml:lang="en">English</title>
</titles>

Output:

<html>
<div class="title" xml:lang="ar">أربيك</div>
<div class="title" xml:lang="en">English</div>
</html>

Or this stylesheet:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
    <xsl:template match="titles">
        <html>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="title">
        <div class="title" lang="{@xml:lang}">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </div>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Output:

<html>
<div class="title" lang="ar">أربيك</div>
<div class="title" lang="en">English</div>
</html>