xsl:value-of

Evaluates an expression as a string, and outputs its value to the current result tree.

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

Attributes

select?

expression

Identifes the expression. If this is not specified, the value to be output is obtained by evaluating the sequence constructor contained within the xsl:value-of element. The full syntax of expressions is outlined in XPath Expression Syntax. Here are some examples of expressions that can be used in the select attribute:

Expression

Value

TITLE

The character content of the first child TITLE element if there is one

@NAME

The value of the NAME attribute of the current element if there is one

.

The expanded character content of the current element

../TITLE

The expanded character content of the first TITLE child of the parent element, if there is one

ancestor::SECTION/TITLE

The expanded character content of the first TITLE child of the enclosing SECTION element, if there is one

ancestor::*/TITLE

The expanded character content of the first TITLE child of the nearest enclosing element that has a child element named TITLE

PERSON[@ID]

The content of the first child PERSON element having an ID attribute, if there is one

*[last()]/@ID

The value of the ID attribute of the last child element of any type, if there are any

.//TITLE

The content of the first descendant TITLE element if there is one

sum(*/@SALES)

The numeric total of the values of the SALES attributes of all child elements that have a SALES attribute

separator?

{ string }

The separator defaults to a single space if the select attribute is used, or to a zero-length string if a sequence constructor is used. The separator attribute may be specified as an attribute value template.

[disable-output-escaping]?

boolean

If set to yes, special characters such as "<" and "&" will be output as themselves, not as entities. Be aware that in general this can produce non-well-formed XML or HTML. It is useful, however, when generating things such as ASP or JSP pages. Escaping may not be disabled when writing to a result tree fragment. The default is no.

Details

If the select expression evaluates to a sequence containing more than one item, the result depends on whether a separator attribute is present. If the separator is absent when running in 1.0 mode, then only the first item is considered. When running in 2.0 mode, all the items are output. The separator defaults to a single space if the select attribute is used, or to a zero-length string if a sequence constructor is used.

Links to W3C specifications

XSLT 2.0 Specification

XSLT 3.0 Specification

See also

xsl:copy-of

xsl:text