Is it possible to copy data from child nodes and pass it to parent node and procced to delete the child nodes using XSLT

Question

I am trying to eliminate child nodes and copy their data to parent node. For Example,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
  <data>
    <School>
      <Name>
        <Data>
           <FirstName>DonaldDuck</FirstName>
        </Data>
       </Name>
    </School>
   </data>
 </root>

Desired output is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <root>
      <data>
        <School>
          <Name>DonaldDuck</Name>
        </School>
      </data>
    </root>     

I have tried using below code but it did not work as expected

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    
    <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
    
    <xsl:template match="root/data">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="school"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    
    <xsl:template match="school">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:copy-of select="*/*"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    
</xsl:stylesheet>

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can achieve your goal by combining the Identity template with a simple replacement template:

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

  <!-- identity template -->
  <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*" />
    </xsl:copy>
   </xsl:template>  
  
  <xsl:template match="Name">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:value-of select="Data/FirstName" />
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

This replaces the value of all Name elements with the value of its Data/FirstName child. If you wanted to replace any child of a child, you should use the */* axis instead - as you did in the example.

In both cases, its output is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <data>
    <School>
      <Name>DonaldDuck</Name>
    </School>
   </data>
</root>