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Re: [xsl] Selecting vs matching text() elements and the default template


Subject: Re: [xsl] Selecting vs matching text() elements and the default template
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 16:11:39 -0500

Hi Doug,

At 03:07 PM 3/11/2005, you wrote:
I have learned on this list that matching is almost always better than
selecting.

Well, actually I'd say the two go together, and each needs to be used in light of what you're doing with the other. (For example, remember that apply-templates instructions can also select nodes from the tree, and this is actually quite useful and important.)


Getting the hang of how this happens between templates and how, therefore, templates work to "steer" the input tree into the output, is basic to mastering XSLT.

As so often, there are good reasons for doing either, but those reasons often don't apply when newbies do one thing or another for no particular reason at all, other than that they're rattling the code until they happen to get something to work. This is certainly fair, as far as it goes (I too learn interfaces by poking at them) -- but when you want to go further ... it helps to know "why".

So if you find that your script cares about some text() elements and not
others, then you probably do not want to use the ignore text() elements
template because it then forces your script to use a select to get the
desired text() element.

Pretty much, yes, subject to certain refinements. I might use an analogy and suggest that it's like setting your spam filter to throw everything away except what you tell it to (whitelisting), when you could more easily tell it just what to throw away (blacklisting). Sometimes whitelisting is in fact a better approach (and this is like XSLT "pulling" of values from the source: nothing gets in but what you ask for). But in most cases (at least in XSLT) it's simpler and easier just to let things through except for just those things you don't want. Then you're not caught by surprise because something you wanted, but neglected to ask for (for whatever reason), fails to appear.


Since text nodes are by definition "leaf" nodes in the data model (they have no children), the practical differences in this particular case only emerge when things get complex -- but typically, at least on loosely-structured data such as most "documentary" data, that happens pretty soon; and because the complexity can be in the source data, the stylesheet itself doesn't have to get very complex for things to go awry. But managing exactly this kind of complexity is what the XSLT processing model is really good at, so there's rarely a good reason to work against it.

Sometimes XSLT newbies try using <xsl:template match="*"/> (suppress all elements by default) in a similar way to solve such "problems" as are introduced by an over-quick reliance on xsl:value-of and such constructs, instead of on the default processing. This can really cause havoc.

Is there a big difference between select="./text()" and select="." In
the examples below? How does this impact performance and scalability?

Example:
<doc>
        unwanted text
        <element>desired text</element>
</doc>

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

vs.

<xsl:template match="element">
        <xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="element/text()">
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>

As far as efficiency and performance of processing, I doubt there's much significant difference between these. But I don't much care, either, since method #2 is clearly, to my eye, preferable and will scale better. Using method #2 I don't have to write explicit instructions for every other kind of text node I want, whereas in method #1, every new text node I want gives me work to do, to override my override.


But the really interesting thing here is that the templates you've offered in method #2 are, in fact, perfect echoes of what would happen to the templates that would apply to those same nodes if you provided no templates at all. Because the built-in templates

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

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

will do the same thing with the element element and its child text node as the templates above, in #2 ... this means you could leave those templates out and get exactly the same result.

In other words, you don't need to do #2 because it's what the processor will already do without asking.

Doing nothing at all is both reasonably efficient (just let the processor do its thing) and really easy to maintain.

Finally, a minor nit:

select="./text()" is short for
select="self::node()/child::text()"

this amounts to exactly the same thing as

select="child::text()", which is long for
select="text()".

So you can say

select="text()"

(leaving off the first step in the path), and things will be fine.

Cheers,
Wendell


====================================================================== Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com 17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635 Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631 Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================


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