XSLT, 2nd Edition

Name

[2.0] <xsl:namespace>

Allows you to create a namespace node in the result tree.

Category

Instruction.

Required Attribute

name

The namespace prefix.

Optional Attribute

select

An XPath expression that defines the value of the namespace itself. If you don’t use the select attribute, the <xsl:namespace> element must contain content.

Content

The <xsl:namespace> element must have content or a select attribute; it is an error if it has both or neither. It is also an error if the <xsl:namespace> element evaluates to a zero-length string.

Appears in

<xsl:namespace> appears inside a template.

Defined in

[2.0] XSLT section 11.7, “Creating Namespace Nodes.”

Example

Courtesy of the XSLT 2.0 spec, here is a stylesheet with a literal result element that contains an <xsl:namespace> element:

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

  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
 
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <data xsi:type="xs:integer" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
      <xsl:namespace name="xs"
        select="'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'"/>
      <xsl:text>42</xsl:text>
    </data>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Notice that the value of the select attribute is in single quotes inside double quotes; without the single quotes, this would select any <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema> elements, causing an error.

The results of this stylesheet look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <data xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" ...