Saxon Documentation

Full Contents

About Saxon

Changes in this Release

Notices

Using XSLT 2.0

Using XQuery

Handling Source Documents

XML Schema Processing

XPath API for Java

Saxon on .NET

Extensibility

Saxon Extensions

Sample Saxon Applications

The Saxon SQL Extension

XSLT Elements
	Introduction
	xsl:analyze-string
	xsl:apply-imports
	xsl:apply-templates
»	xsl:attribute
	xsl:attribute-set
	xsl:call-template
	xsl:character-map
	xsl:choose
	xsl:comment
	xsl:copy
	xsl:copy-of
	xsl:decimal-format
	xsl:document
	xsl:element
	xsl:fallback
	xsl:for-each
	xsl:for-each-group
	xsl:function
	xsl:if
	xsl:include
	xsl:import
	xsl:import-schema
	xsl:key
	xsl:matching-substring
	xsl:message
	xsl:namespace
	xsl:namespace-alias
	xsl:next-match
	xsl:non-matching-substring
	xsl:number
	xsl:otherwise
	xsl:output
	xsl:output-character
	xsl:param
	xsl:perform-sort
	xsl:preserve-space
	xsl:processing-instruction
	xsl:result-document
	xsl:sequence
	xsl:sort
	xsl:strip-space
	xsl:stylesheet
	xsl:template
	xsl:text
	xsl:value-of
	xsl:variable
	xsl:when
	xsl:with-param
	Literal Result Elements
	XSLT Patterns

XPath 2.0 Expression Syntax

Function Library

Standards Conformance

xsl:attribute

The xsl:attribute element is used to add an attribute value to an xsl:element element or general formatting element, or to an element created using xsl:copy. The attribute must be output immediately after the element, with no intervening character data. The name of the attribute is indicated by the name attribute and the value by the content of the xsl:attribute element.

The attribute name is interpreted as an attribute value template, so it may contain string expressions within curly braces. The full syntax of string expressions is outlined in XPath Expression Syntax.

The attribute value may be given either by a select attribute or by an enclosed sequence constructor. If the select attribute is used and the value is a sequence, then the items in the sequence are output space-separated.

The separator attribute is not yet available.

For example, the following code creates a <FONT> element with several attributes:

<xsl:element name="FONT">
    <xsl:attribute name="SIZE">4</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="FACE">Courier New</xsl:attribute>
Some output text
</xsl:element>

A new attribute type is available in XSLT 2.0. This indicates the data type of the value of the attribute. In Saxon, the value must be a built-in type defined in XML Schema, for example xs:integer or xs:date. Type annotations are only accessible if the attribute is added to a temporary tree that specifies validation="preserve". The value given to the attribute must be a string that conforms to the rules for the data type, as defined in XML Schema.

There are two main uses for the xsl:attribute element:

It is the only way to set attributes on an element generated dynamically using xsl:element
It allows attributes of a literal result element to be calculated using xsl:value-of.

The xsl:attribute must be output immediately after the relevant element is generated: there must be no intervening character data (other than white space which is ignored). Saxon outputs the closing ">" of the element start tag as soon as something other than an attribute is written to the output stream, and rejects an attempt to output an attribute if there is no currently-open start tag. Any special characters within the attribute value will automatically be escaped (for example, "<" will be output as "<")

If two attributes are output with the same name, the second one takes precedence.