Here's the sample data:
<catalog>
<cd>
<title>Empire Burlesque</title>
<artist>Bob Dylan</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<customField1>Whatever</customField1>
<customField2>Whatever</customField2>
<customField3>Whatever</customField3>
<company>Columbia</company>
<price>10.90</price>
<year>1985</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Hide your heart</title>
<artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<customField1>Whatever</customField1>
<customField2>Whatever</customField2>
<company>CBS Records</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1988</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Greatest Hits</title>
<artist>Dolly Parton</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<customField1>Whatever</customField1>
<company>RCA</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1982</year>
</cd>
</catalog>
Say I want to select everything except the price and year elements. I would expect to write something like the below, which obviously doesn't work.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<xsl:for-each select="//cd/* except (//cd/price|//cd/year)">
Current node: <xsl:value-of select="current()"/>
<br />
</xsl:for-each>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Please help me find a way to exclude certain child elements.
But actually this is bad and unnecessarily complicated. Better:
Avoid
<xsl:for-each>
. Almost all of the time it is the wrong tool and should be substituted by<xsl:apply-templates>
and<xsl:template>
.The above works because of match expression specificity.
match="cd/price | cd/year"
is more specific thanmatch="cd/*"
, so it is the preferred template forcd/price
orcd/year
elements. Don't try to exclude nodes, let them come and handle them by discarding them.I'd start experimenting with something like
Or you just do normal recursive template matching with
<xsl:apply-templates/>
, and then have empty templates for<price/>
and<year/>
elements: