Retrieve all the attribute values from XML using XSLT

Question

I can't figure out how to access all the attributes in a tag from an XML document.

Let's say I have the following XML:

<names>
  <name firstname="Rocky" lastname="Balboa" divider=", "/>
  <name firstname="Ivan" lastname="Drago" divider=", "/>
</names>

I want the following output: Rocky Balboa, Ivan Drago,

What I currently have is:

<xsl:for-each select="names/name">
   <xsl:value-of select="@firstname"/>
   <xsl:value-of select="@lastname"/>
   <xsl:value-of select="@divider"/>
</xsl:for-each>

What I'm wondering is if it's possible to do this in just one value-of select instead of having to do three of them. So to clarify, I want to be able to output all the attributes in the tag with one single value-of select. Is this possible?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Because I'm not sure if the use of xsl:value-of is a hard requirement, perhaps something like the following could be what you are locking for.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="name" mode ="print" >
        <xsl:value-of select="@firstname"/>
        <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
        <xsl:value-of select="@lastname"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="@divider"/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:apply-templates  select="names/name" mode="print"/>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

You can use <xsl:apply-templates select="names/name" mode="print"/> at any position you have considered about using a one line value-of for all attributes.
The above template will generate the following output:

Rocky Balboa, Ivan Drago,

Update crate output without using the attribute names:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="name" mode ="print" >
        <xsl:for-each select="@*" >
            <xsl:if test="not(position() = last() or position() = 1)">
                <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
            </xsl:if>
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>

        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:apply-templates  select="names/name" mode="print"/>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 2

try the following:

<xsl:template match="/">
 <xsl:for-each select="names/name/@*">
        <xsl:value-of select="concat( ., ' ')"/>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>     

Answer 3

You can use this XPath @* to get all attributes, eg:

<xsl:template match="/*">
    <xsl:for-each select="@*">
        <xsl:value-of select="concat(name(), ': ', ., ' ')"/>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

This will let you use just one value-of select to get the output you want. It will take all attribute into consideration.

This should be a sufficient hint for you to figure out things. Let me know if you have any other question.

Answer 4

If you can use XSLT 2.0, you can do something like this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="text"/>

    <xsl:template match="text()"/>

    <xsl:template match="*[@*]">
        <xsl:value-of select="@*[not(name()='divider')]" separator=" "/>
        <xsl:value-of select="@divider"/>           
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

This will output all attributes and you have no control over the order, so if you want to specify an order, you can either use a sequence:

<xsl:value-of select="(@firstname,@lastname)" separator=" "/>

or do an xsl:apply-templates with an xsl:sort to sort the attributes by name() (or whatever). Let me know if you'd like an example.

Answer 5

The following works in XSLT 2.0:

<xsl:for-each select="names/name">
   <xsl:value-of select="@firstname, @lastname, @divider"/>
</xsl:for-each>

and in 3.0 you can do:

<xsl:value-of select="names/name!(@firstname, @lastname, @divider)"/>

though you may need to make adjustments to get the whitespace the way you want it.