xsl:element

Used to create an output element whose name might be calculated at run-time.

Category: instruction
Content: sequence-constructor
Permitted parent elements: any XSLT element whose content model is sequence-constructor; any literal result element

Attributes

`name`	`{ qname }`	The name of the generated element. The name attribute is an attribute value template, so it may contain string expressions inside curly braces.
`namespace?`	`{ uri }`	The namespace URI of the element.
`inherit-namespaces?`	`boolean`	If the value is `yes` (the default), then the namespace nodes created for the generated element are copied to its children and descendants. If the value is `no`, then these namespace nodes are not automatically copied.
`use-attribute-sets?`	`eqnames`	Attributes of the generated element can be defined by reference to named attribute sets, provided as a whitespace-separated list. They are applied in the order given: if the same attribute is generated more than once, the later value always takes precedence.
`type?`	`eqname`	Added in XSLT 2.0. Indicates the data type of the value of the element. The value may be a built-in type defined in XML Schema, for example `xs:integer` or `xs:date`, or a user-defined type defined in a schema imported using `xsl:import-schema`. Type annotations are only accessible if the attribute is added to a temporary tree that specifies `type-information="preserve"`. The attribute causes the content of the element to be validated against the schema definition of the type, and will cause a fatal dynamic error if validation fails.
`validation?`	`"strict" \| "lax" \| "preserve" \| "strip"`

Notes on the Saxon implementation

When the element name is known at compile time, Saxon generates exactly the same code as for a literal result elements. Literal result elements are generally preferred in such cases because they are more readable.

Motivated by streaming, the on-empty attribute was introduced in an early Working Draft for XSLT 3.0, but later removed and replaced by the new xsl:on-empty, xsl:on-non-empty and xsl:where-populated instructions. The on-empty attribute was implemented in Saxon 9.5, but removed in 9.7.

Details

The attributes of the generated element are defined by subsequent xsl:attribute elements, or by reference to named attribute sets using the optional use-attribute-sets attribute. The content of the generated element is whatever is generated between the <xsl:element> and </xsl:element> tags.

Examples

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>

This example is equivalent to the simpler literal result element:

<FONT SIZE="4" FACE="Courier New"> Some output text </FONT>

Links to W3C specifications

XSLT 2.0 Specification

XSLT 3.0 Specification