XSLT, 2nd Edition

Using <xsl:preserve-space> and <xsl:strip-space>

The XSLT spec gives us two ways of dealing with whitespace nodes. We can use the <xsl:preserve-space> and <xsl:strip-space> nodes to keep or delete whitespace. Here’s a slightly modified version of our stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- copy-of-whitespace.xsl -->
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

  <xsl:preserve-space elements="manufacturer"/>
  <xsl:strip-space elements="cars"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Here’s what we get when we process our list of cars with the modified stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!-- carlist_whitespace.xml --><cars>
        <manufacturer name="          Chevrolet  ">
    <car>Cavalier</car>
    <car>Corvette</car>
    <car>Impala</car>
    <car>Monte



Carlo</car>
  </manufacturer></cars>

In the result document, the whitespace nodes inside the <cars> element have been removed, while all the whitespace inside the <manufacturer> element has been preserved. (The complete text of the <manufacturer> element scrolls off the right side of the page.) You can use <xsl:preserve-space> and <strip-space> with wildcards as well:

<xsl:preserve-space elements="cars manufacturer"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

This tells the XSLT processor to strip whitespace nodes on all the elements except the <cars> and <manufacturer> elements. The elements attribute can contain an asterisk or a space-separated list of element names.

Note

Because whitespace-only ...