Create an XML structure from attributes in a single node

Question

I have the following XML source:

<element not-relevant="true" bold="true" superscript="true" subscript="false" text="stuff"/> 

In any order, I need to iterate over certain attributes (that is, only those associated with the HTML I created: bold / superscript / index, etc.), and where one of these attributes evaluates to “true”, output nested elements to get the following output:

 <strong> <sup> stuff </sup> </strong> 

I have a feeling that I need to use some kind of recursion, as it should (without an infinite loop, of course):

 <xsl:template match="element"> <xsl:call-template name="content"> <xsl:with-param name="text" select="@text"/> </xsl:call-template> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="content"> <xsl:param name="text"/> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="@bold = 'true'"> <strong> <xsl:copy> <xsl:call-template name="content"> <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/> </xsl:call-template> <xsl:copy> </strong> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="@subscript = 'true'"> <sub> <xsl:copy> <xsl:call-template name="content"> <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/> </xsl:call-template> <xsl:copy> </sub> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="@superscript = 'true'"> <sup> <xsl:copy> <xsl:call-template name="content"> <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/> </xsl:call-template> <xsl:copy> </sup> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:value-of select="$text" disable-output-escaping="yes"/> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:template> 

Any ideas? I am looking for the purest XSLT 2.0 solution and appreciate the help.

Thanks,

Answer 1

This is a good use case for <xsl:next-match/> :

 <xsl:template match="element" priority="1"> <xsl:value-of select="@text" /> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="element[@superscript = 'true']" priority="2"> <sup><xsl:next-match/></sup> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="element[@subscript = 'true']" priority="3"> <sub><xsl:next-match/></sub> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="element[@bold = 'true']" priority="4"> <strong><xsl:next-match/></strong> </xsl:template> 

When you apply patterns to an element element , the match pattern with the highest priority is first run, and if this pattern uses next-match , it delegates the next priority, etc. Your element example in the question matches the first, second, and fourth patterns above, so the “bold” template that will delegate the “superscript” and finally the common element will be selected first, which will result in <strong><sup>stuff</sup></strong>

As you can see from this example, the priority numbers determine the nesting order - if the priorities of the second and fourth templates were canceled, instead you get <sup><strong>stuff</strong></sup> .