XSLT Selection of Nodes Based on Substring of Element Name

Question

How can I, with XSLT, select nodes based on a substring of the nodes' element name?

For example, consider the XML:

<foo_bar>Keep this.
  <foo_who>Keep this, too.
    <fu_bar>Don't want this.</fu_bar>
  </foo_who>
</foo_bar>

From which I want to output:

<foo_bar>Keep this.
  <foo_who>Keep this, too.
  </foo_who>
</foo_bar>

Here I want to select for processing those nodes whose names match a regex like "foo.*".

I think I need an XSLT template match attribute expression, or an apply-templates select attribute expression, that applies the regex to the element's name. But maybe this can't be done without some construct like an statement?

Any help would be appreciated.

Kevin Hakanson Kevin Hakanson · Accepted Answer · 2009-06-17T02:28:37

Here is some XSL that finds elements that start with "foo" to get you started. I don't think regex functionality was added until XSLT 2.0 based on Regular Expression Matching in XSLT 2.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="*">
        <xsl:variable name="name" select="local-name()"/>
        <xsl:if test="starts-with($name, 'foo')">
            <xsl:copy>
                <xsl:apply-templates/>
            </xsl:copy>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

It gives this output, which seems to have an extra newline.

<foo_bar>Keep this.
  <foo_who>Keep this, too.

  </foo_who>
</foo_bar>

XSLT Selection of Nodes Based on Substring of Element Name

1 Answers