xsl:fallback

Used to define recovery action to be taken when an instruction element is used in the stylesheet and no implementation of that element is available.

Category: instruction
Content: sequence-constructor
Permitted parent elements: xsl:analyze-string ; xsl:evaluate ; xsl:fork ; xsl:merge ; xsl:next-match ; xsl:try ; any XSLT element whose content model is sequence-constructor; any literal result element
Element has no attributes

Saxon availability

Available in XSLT 1.0 and later versions. Available in all Saxon editions. Available for all platforms.

Details

The xsl:fallback element is used when a stylesheet contains an instruction element and no implementation of that element is available. An element is an instruction element if its namespace URI is the standard URI for XSLT elements or if its namespace is identified in the extension-element-prefixes attribute of a containing literal result element, or in the extension-element-prefixes attribute of the xsl:stylesheet element.

If the xsl:fallback element appears in any other context, it is ignored, together with all its child and descendant elements.

If the parent element can be instantiated and processed, the xsl:fallback element and its descendants are ignored. If the parent element is not recognised or if any failure occurs instantiating it, all its xsl:fallback children are processed in turn. If there are no xsl:fallback children, an error is reported.

Links to W3C specifications

XSLT 2.0 Specification

XSLT 3.0 Specification