"variable" - Declaring Variables

XML Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - Version 5.05, by Dr. Herong Yang

XML Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟XSLT Elements as Programming Statements

∟"variable" - Declaring Variables

This section describes the 'variable' element, which is used in the content of a 'template' element. The 'variable' element is an XSLT statement that declares a variable and assigns a value to the variable.

"variable": A child element used as part of the content of a "template" element. A "variable" element serves as a variable declaration and assignment statement. The syntax of the "variable" element is:

<xsl:variable name="variable_name">
variable_value
</xsl:variable>

The variable name is the value of the "name" attribute. The variable value is the content of the statement element.

Once a variable is defined, its value can be referred by its name pre-fixed with a dollar sign "$". A variable can only be accessed in the same sub-tree where it is defined.

For example:

<xsl:template match="document">
 <xsl:variable name="author"><xsl:value-of 
  select="property/@author"/></xsl:variable>
 <xsl:for-each select="chapter">
  Author: <xsl:value-of select="$author">
  ...
 </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

In this code, I stored the value of attribute "author" of element "property" in variable "author". Then I used this variable in a "for-each" loop.

Last update: 2014.

Table of Contents

About This Book

Introduction of XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

XML File Syntax

XML File Browsers

DOM (Document Object Model) Programming Interface

SAX (Simple API for XML) Programming Interface

DTD (Document Type Definition) Introduction

Syntaxes of DTD Statements

Validating an XML Document against the Specified DTD Document Type