Reference: XSLT elements
This section of the Saxon documentation lists all of the standard XSLT elements in the
http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform namespace, providing brief
descriptions of their function, details about their structure and usage, and any information
specific to the Saxon implementation. Many also have further detailed descriptions and
examples.
For information about the additional extension elements provided with the Saxon product, see Extension instructions.
Conformance
Saxon implements the XSLT 3.0 Recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium: see XSLT 3.0 conformance. The information here is designed to give a comprehensive summary of the features, but for the full specification, consult the official standard.
This section now includes all additions in the draft XSLT 4.0
specification dated 28 January 2026, with information about the Saxon
implementation. The use of these 4.0 features requires Saxon-PE or Saxon-EE, and must be
enabled: from Saxon 13, on the XSLT command line, use the option
-xsltversion:4.0; or on the XsltCompiler class, call
setXsltLanguageVersion("4.0"); or set the configuration property ALLOW_SYNTAX_EXTENSIONS. (For more information see Enabling 4.0 features.)
XSLT patterns
This section of the documentation also contains an informal description of the syntax of XSLT Patterns.
Standard attributes
There are a number of standard attributes that may appear on any XSLT element (or any literal result element, in which case the names of the
attributes must be in the XSLT namespace): default-collation,
default-mode, default-validation,
exclude-result-prefixes, expand-text,
extension-element-prefixes, schema-role (new in XSLT 4.0),
use-when, version,
and xpath-default-namespace. For information about these, see the xsl:stylesheet element.