Skip to Main Content
XML Hacks
book

XML Hacks

by Michael Fitzgerald
July 2004
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
479 pages
12h 30m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from XML Hacks

Create a Text File from an XML Document

Use this stylesheet to extract only the text from any XML document.

Sometimes you just want to leave the XML behind and keep only the text found in a document. The stylesheet text.xsl can do that for you. (There’s an even easier way; see “Built-in Templates” following). It can be applied to any XML document, which includes XHTML. It is shown in Example 3-15.

Example 3-15. text.xsl

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
<xsl:output method="text"/>
            xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
   
<xsl:template match="/">
 <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>
</xsl:template>
   
</xsl:stylesheet>

This stylesheet finds the root node and then selects all element children (*) for processing. To test, apply this stylesheet to the XHTML document magnacarta.html , the pact between King John and the barony in England that was first signed at Runnymede on June 15, 1215 (see http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/magna-carta.html):

xalan magnacarta.html text.xsl

A small portion of the output is shown in Example 3-16. The result is shown in IE in Figure 3-18.

Example 3-16. A portion of the Magna Carta

Magna Carta The Magna Carta JOHN, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting. KNOW THAT BEFORE GOD, for the health of our soul and those of our ancestors and heirs, ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

XML Schema Complete Reference, The

XML Schema Complete Reference, The

Cliff Binstock, Chris Galtenberg, Mike Wooding, Chris Dix, Mitchell Smith, Dave Peterson
.NET & XML

.NET & XML

Niel M. Bornstein

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007116Supplemental ContentErrata Page