My Google sitemap renders well through
XSLT fine without the
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
in the <urlset> element, however
when included, my foreach statement
doesn't work and nothing renders in
the template
This is a FAQ.
XPath treats any unprefixed name as belonging to "no namespace". However, the elements in the provided document belong to the "http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" namespace -- not to "no namespace".
Therefore, the following XPath expression doesn't select any node at all:
urlset/url
Solution:
Define the "http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" namespace in the XSLT stylesheet and associate a prefix to it. Then use this prefix with all names that participate in any XPath expression.
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:s="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
exclude-result-prefixes="s"
>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<h2>Sitemap</h2>
<table border="1">
<tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
<th>Location</th>
<th>Last Modified</th>
<th>Update Frequency</th>
<th>Priority</th>
</tr>
<xsl:for-each select="s:urlset/s:url">
<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select="s:loc"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="s:lastmod"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="s:changefreq"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="s:priority"/></td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
when this transformation is applied on the provided XML document:
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>{site_url}</loc>
<lastmod>{current_time format="%Y-%m-%d"}</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
it correctly produces the following result:
<html>
<body>
<h2>Sitemap</h2>
<table border="1">
<tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
<th>Location</th>
<th>Last Modified</th>
<th>Update Frequency</th>
<th>Priority</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>{site_url}</td>
<td>{current_time format="%Y-%m-%d"}</td>
<td>monthly</td>
<td>0.5</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>