XSLT Cookbook

Selecting All but a Specific Element

Problem

You want to select all elements in a specific context, except the ones you choose to exclude.

Solution

The best way to select all but a specific element is to say:

<xsl:apply-templates select="*[not(self::element-to-ignore)]"/>

or, if iterating, say:

<xsl:for-each select="*[not(self::element-to-ignore)]">
...
</xsl:for-each>

Discussion

When XSLT newbies first need to select all but a specific element, they will probably think of the following construct first:

<xsl:apply-templates select="*[name(  ) != 'element-to-ignore']"/>

This code works in many cases, but it could cause trouble when the document uses namespaces. Recall that name( ) returns the node’s QName: the namespace prefix concatenated to the local part of the name. However, in any given XML document, nothing forces the author to use a specific prefix:

<!--This will fail if the author decided to use SALES:product instead of 
sales:product -->
<xsl:apply-templates select="*[name(  ) != 'sales:product']"/>

Alternatively, you could use local-name( ). However, this prefix would ignore elements from all namespaces that have that particular local name, which might not be what you want.

This recommendation applies only in the case of elements, not attributes. If you need to select all but a specific attribute, use local-name( ). The self axis, when applied to a name, refers only to elements. In other words, use <xsl:copy-of select=@*[local-name( ) != 'ignored-attribute']/> and not <xsl:copy-of ...