XSL element value-of

Generating Text with xsl:value-of

<value-of>
  select = string-expression
  disable-output-escaping = yes | no
Model: EMPTY
</value-of>

The xsl:value-of element is instantiated to create a text node in the result tree. The required select attribute is an expression; this expression is evaluated and the resulting object is converted to a string as if by a call to the string function. The string specifies the string-value of the created text node. If the string is empty, no text node will be created. The created text node will be merged with any adjacent text nodes.

The xsl:copy-of element can be used to copy a node-set over to the result tree without converting it to a string. See copy-of.

For example, the following creates an HTML paragraph from a person element with given-name and family-name attributes. The paragraph will contain the value of the given-name attribute of the current node followed by a space and the value of the family-name attribute of the current node.

<xsl:template match="person">
  <p>
   <xsl:value-of select="@given-name"/>
   <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
   <xsl:value-of select="@family-name"/>
  </p>
</xsl:template>

For another example, the following creates an HTML paragraph from a person element with given-name and family-name children elements. The paragraph will contain the string-value of the first given-name child element of the current node followed by a space and the string-value of the first family-name child element of the current node.

<xsl:template match="person">
  <p>
   <xsl:value-of select="given-name"/>
   <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
   <xsl:value-of select="family-name"/>
  </p>
</xsl:template>

The following precedes each procedure element with a paragraph containing the security level of the procedure. It assumes that the security level that applies to a procedure is determined by a security attribute on the procedure element or on an ancestor element of the procedure. It also assumes that if more than one such element has a security attribute then the security level is determined by the element that is closest to the procedure.

<xsl:template match="procedure">
  <fo:block>
    <xsl:value-of select="ancestor-or-self::*[@security][1]/@security"/>
  </fo:block>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>