XSLT, 2nd Edition

The normalize-space() function

Another useful technique for controlling whitespace is the normalize-space() function. In our previous example, we used <xsl:preserve-space> and <xsl:strip-space> to control whitespace nodes in various elements, but we still have quite a bit of whitespace in the name attribute and the last <car> in the list. To clean up the whitespace, we can use the normalize-space() function. It does three things:

• It removes all leading spaces.

• It removes all trailing spaces.

• It replaces any group of consecutive whitespace characters with a single space.

We’ll use normalize-space() in this stylesheet:

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

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:for-each select="@*">
        <xsl:attribute name="{name()}">
          <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space()"/>
        </xsl:attribute>
      </xsl:for-each>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="text()">
    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space()"/>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

This stylesheet generates these crowded results:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><cars><manufacturer name="Chevr
olet"><car>Cavalier</car><car>Corvette</car><car>Impala</car><car>Mon
te Carlo</car></manufacturer></cars>

This removes all the extraneous whitespace from the name attribute and the <car> element; it also effectively removes the whitespace-only ...