Structuring the XML output.

Note: This post will be used as reference for several posts on XSLT.

If you just want to do a simple transformation where you do the same thing over and over again when a template hits, you don't really need to call templates.

Say you have a long list of records (the music kind) and you want to extract the ones by Michael Jackson, you can simply perform an if-statement inside the template.

1. <!-- Given a structure like this one... -->
2. < recordCollection >
3. <record>
4. <artist>Madonna</artist>
5. <title>Like a prair</title>
6. </record>
7. <record>
8. <artist>Gorillaz</artist>
9. <title>Gorillaz</title>
10. </record>
11. <record>
12. <artist>Madcon</artist>
13. <title>Beggin</title>
14. </record>
15. <record>
16. <artist>Michael Jackson</artist>
17. <title>Bad</title>
18. </record>
19. <record>
20. <artist>Queen</artist>
21. <title>Jazz</title>
22. </record>
23. <record>
24. <artist>Muse</artist>
25. <title>The Resistance</title>
26. </record>
27. <record>
28. <artist>Duffy</artist>
29. <title>Rockferry</title>
30. </record>
31. </ recordCollection >
32.  
33. <!-- Then you would want to have a simple template handling all records and filtering out the ones matching the artist you look for and list the artists name and album. -->
34.  
35. <xsl:template match="record">
36. <xsl:if test="./artist='Michael Jackson'">
37. Artist: <xsl:value-of select="./artist" />
38. Album: <xsl:value-of select="./title" />
39. </xsl:if>
40. </ xsl:template >