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XSLT <xsl:for-each> Element

The <xsl:for-each> element applies a template repeatedly for each node.

<xsl:for-each> Element​

The <xsl:for-each> element can be used to select each XML element of a specified set of nodes and apply a template to them.

Syntax​

The syntax of <xsl:> is as follows:

<xsl:for-each
   select=Expression>
</xsl:for-each>

Attributes​

The table describes the meaning of the attributes of <xsl:>:

NameDescription
selectXPath Expression to be evaluated in current context to determine the set of nodes to be iterated.

Filtering the Output​

The output from the XML file can be filtered by adding a criterion to the select attribute in the <xsl:for-each> element.

Allowed filter operators are:

  • = equal
  • != not equal
  • &lt; less than
  • &gt; greater than

For example:

<xsl:for-each select="bookstore/book[author='Tom Nolan']">

Example​

Let's see an example:

books.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="books.xsl"?>

<bookstore>
    <book category="children">
        <title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
        <author>J K. Rowling</author>
        <year>2005</year>
        <price>29.99</price>
    </book>
    <book category="web">
        <title lang="en">XQuery Tips</title>
        <author>Tom Nolan</author>
        <year>2022</year>
        <price>39.99</price>
    </book>
    <book category="web">
        <title lang="en">Learn XML</title>
        <author>Tutorial Reference</author>
        <year>2022</year>
        <price>9.99</price>
    </book>
</bookstore>
books.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
        <body>
            <h2>The Bookstore</h2>
            <table border="1">
                <tr bgcolor="#6565d5">
                    <th>Title</th>
                    <th>Author</th>
                    <th>Year</th>
                    <th>Price</th>
                </tr>  
                <xsl:for-each select="bookstore/book">
                    <tr>
                        <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
                        <td><xsl:value-of select="author"/></td>
                        <td><xsl:value-of select="year"/></td>
                        <td><xsl:value-of select="price"/></td>
                    </tr>
                </xsl:for-each>
            </table>
        </body>
    </html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
note

The select attribute contains an XPath expression.

An XPath expression works like navigating a file system and a forward slash (/) selects subdirectories.

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