XSLT with XML source that has a default namespace set to xmlns

Question

I have an XML document with a default namespace indicated at the root. Something like this:

Answer 1

You need to declare the namespace in your XSLT, and use it in XPath expressions. E.g.:

<xsl:stylesheet ... xmlns:my="http://www.mysite.com">

   <xsl:template match="/my:MyRoot"> ... </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Note that you must provide some prefix if you want to refer to elements from that namespace in XPath. While you can just do xmlns="..." without the prefix, and it will work for literal result elements, it won't work for XPath - in XPath, an unprefixed name is always considered to be in namespace with blank URI, regardless of any xmlns="..." in scope.

Answer 2

If you use XSLT 2.0, specify xpath-default-namespace="http://www.example.com" in the stylesheet section.

Answer 3

If this was kind of name space problem, there is room to try to modify two things in the xslt file:

• add "my" name space definition in xsl:stylesheet tag
• use "my:" prefix when call elements in traversing the xml file.

result

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:my="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <xsl:template match="/" >
        <soap:Envelope xsl:version="1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
            <soap:Body>
                <NewRoot xmlns="http://wherever.com">
                    <NewChild>
                        <ChildID>ABCD</ChildID>
                        <ChildData>
                            <xsl:value-of select="/my:MyRoot/my:MyChild1/my:MyData"/>
                        </ChildData>
                    </NewChild>
                </NewRoot>
            </soap:Body>
        </soap:Envelope>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>