xsl:element

Used to create an output element whose name might be calculated at run-time.

Category: instruction
Content: sequence-constructor
Permitted parent elements: any XSLT element whose content model is sequence constructor; any literal result element

Attributes

`name`	`{ qname }`	The name of the generated element. The name attribute is an attribute value template, so it may contain string expressions inside curly braces.
`namespace?`	`{ uri }`
`inherit-namespaces?`	`boolean`
`use-attribute-sets?`	`eqnames`	Attributes of the generated element can be defined by reference to named attribute sets, provided as a white-space-separated list. They are applied in the order given: if the same attribute is generated more than once, the later value always takes precedence.
`type?`	`eqname`	Added in XSLT 2.0. Indicates the data type of the value of the element. The value may be a built-in type defined in XML Schema, for example `xs:integer` or `xs:date`, or a user-defined type defined in a schema imported using `xsl:import-schema`. Type annotations are only accessible if the attribute is added to a temporary tree that specifies `type-information="preserve"`. The attribute causes the content of the element to be validated against the schema definition of the type, and will cause a fatal dynamic error if validation fails.
`validation?`	`"strict" \| "lax" \| "preserve" \| "strip"`
`on-empty?`	`expression`	Added in XSLT 3.0, motivated by streaming. Expression which defines an alternative result in the case where the element would otherwise be empty. The most likely value is `on-empty="()"`, which means that empty elements are not written (see example below).

Details

The attributes of the generated element are defined by subsequent xsl:attribute elements, or by reference to named attribute sets using the optional use-attribute-sets attribute. The content of the generated element is whatever is generated between the <xsl:element> and </xsl:element> tags.

Examples

Example 1

The following code creates a <FONT> element with several attributes:

<xsl:element name="FONT"> <xsl:attribute name="SIZE">4</xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="FACE">Courier New</xsl:attribute> Some output text </xsl:element>

Example 2

The following is an example using the on-empty="()" attribute new in XSLT 3.0, motivated by streaming:

<xsl:element name="authors" on-empty="()"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:element>

This has the effect that if there are no authors, no <authors> element will be written. Achieving this within the constraints of streaming can be difficult. But of course the feature is also a convenient short-cut quite independently of streaming.

Links to W3C specifications

XSLT 2.0 Specification

XSLT 3.0 Specification