Chapter 23. XSLT Reference

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is a functional programming language used to specify how an input XML document is converted into another text document--possibly, though not necessarily, another XML document. An XSLT processor reads both an input XML document and an XSLT stylesheet (which is itself an XML document because XSLT is an XML application) and produces a result tree as output. This result tree may then be serialized into a file or written onto a stream. Documents can be transformed using a standalone program or as part of a larger program that communicates with the XSLT processor through its API.

23.1. The XSLT Namespace

All standard XSLT elements are in the http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform namespace. In this chapter, we assume that this URI is mapped to the xsl prefix using an appropriate xmlns:xsl declaration somewhere in the stylesheet. This mapping is normally declared on the root element like this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
                xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <!-- XSLT top-level elements go here -->
</xsl:stylesheet>

Chapter 23. XSLT Reference

Contents:

23.1. The XSLT Namespace