Transforming nested XML with XSLT

Question

I seemed to have made some progress with XSLT, but I'm still finding it very hard to transform nested XML. The XML looks as follows:

<transcription xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/schema/aor2_18112016.xsd">
    
    <page filename="00000005.tif" reader="Harvey" pagination="title page"/>
    <annotation>
        
        <marginalia hand="Italian">
            <language ident="LA">
                <position place="head" book_orientation="0">
                    <marginalia_text>gratum opus agricolis.</marginalia_text>
                </position>
            </language>
            <translation>The pleasant work for the husbandman.</translation>
        </marginalia>
        
    </annotation>
</transcription>

By retaining some elements and attributes and modifying others I want to slightly transform this to:

<transcription xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/schema/aor2_18112016.xsd">
    
    <page filename="00000005.tif" reader="Harvey" pagination="title page"/>
    <annotation>
        
        <addition>
          <hand hands="Italian">
            <language ident="LA">
                <position place="head" book_orientation="0">
                    <note>gratum opus agricolis.</note>
                </position>
            </language>
            <translation>The pleasant work for the husbandman.</translation>
        </addition>
        
    </annotation>
</transcription>

I have generated this XSL so far, but for some reason it won't copy the properties of the position element nor the content of the marginalia_text element (which becomes the note element in the transformed XML file). Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I thought about referring to various templates, but this doesn't work either...

<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes"/>
        <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
            <xsl:copy>
                <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
            </xsl:copy>
        </xsl:template>
        
    <xsl:template match="marginalia">
        <additions>
            <xsl:element name="hand">
                <xsl:attribute name="hands"><xsl:value-of select="@hand"/></xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:element name="position">
                    <xsl:attribute name="place"><xsl:value-of select="@place" /></xsl:attribute>
                    <xsl:attribute name="book_orientation"><xsl:value-of select="@book_orientation" /> 
                    </xsl:attribute>
                    <xsl:element name="note"><xsl:value-of select="marginalia_text"/>
                    </xsl:element>
                </xsl:element> 
            </xsl:element>
            <xsl:element name="translation"><xsl:value-of select="translation"/></xsl:element>
        </additions>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 1

You were only missing the path to the attributes or elements you needed. Remember that your template matches a "marginalia" node. From there you have to specify the path to your elements/attributes.

<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
        
    <xsl:template match="marginalia">
        <additions>
            <xsl:element name="hand">
                <xsl:attribute name="hands"><xsl:value-of select="@hand"/></xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:element name="position">
                    <xsl:attribute name="place"><xsl:value-of select="language/position/@place" /></xsl:attribute>
                    <xsl:attribute name="book_orientation"><xsl:value-of select="language/position/@book_orientation" /> 
                    </xsl:attribute>
                    <xsl:element name="note"><xsl:value-of select="language/position/marginalia_text"/>
                    </xsl:element>
                </xsl:element> 
            </xsl:element>
            <xsl:element name="translation"><xsl:value-of select="translation"/></xsl:element>
        </additions>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

See it working here : https://xsltfiddle.liberty-development.net/nb9PtD1

Answer 2

You just need to use so called Identity Transformation pattern. Overall, you need two dedicated templates to handle marginalia and marginalia_text elements. Everything else will be copied as-is from the source XML document.

XSLT

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

    <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="marginalia">
        <addition>
            <hand hands="{@hand}"/>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </addition>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="marginalia_text">
        <note>
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </note>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>