XSLT

Name

<xsl:when> — Defines one branch of an <xsl:choose> element. It is equivalent to the Java case statement.

Category

Subinstruction (<xsl:when> always appears as a child of an <xsl:choose> element)

Required Attributes

test

Contains a boolean expression that is evaluated. If the expression evaluates to true, the contents of the <xsl:when> element are processed; otherwise, the contents of the <xsl:when> are ignored.

Optional Attributes

None.

Content

An XSLT template.

Appears in

The <xsl:choose> element only.

Defined in

XSLT section 9.2, Conditional Processing with xsl:choose.

Example

This example uses an <xsl:choose> element and three <xsl:when> elements to cycle through a set of values. Now we will generate rows of an HTML table for each <listitem>:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<list xml:lang="en">
  <title>Albums I've bought recently:</title>
  <listitem>The Sacred Art of Dub</listitem>
  <listitem>Only the Poor Man Feel It</listitem>
  <listitem>Excitable Boy</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="sw">Aki Special</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="en-gb">Combat Rock</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="zu">Talking Timbuktu</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="jz">The Birth of the Cool</listitem>
</list>

In our stylesheet, we’ll generate table rows with the background colors of mintcream, lavender, whitesmoke, and papayawhip. For each <listitem> in our source document, one of the <xsl:when> elements (or the <xsl:otherwise> element) generates the appropriate color.

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