Chapter 3. Advanced Stylesheet Concepts

• Template

• Template Rule

• <xsl:template>

• <xsl:apply-templates>

• <xsl:call-template>

• <xsl:value-of>

• Built-in template rules

The main building block of an XSLT stylesheet is the template, which contains all the instructions used to process XML elements. In this chapter, we will discuss templates in general, as well as the <xsl:template> element and its components. Two closely related instruction elements, <xsl:apply-templates> and <xsl:call-template>, both used to select or call template rules, are included in this chapter, as well as <xsl:value-of>, which is used to extract a value from an expression. Additionally, we will discuss built-in template rules, the rules that kick in when a node in the input XML document is not matched.