<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mydoc xmlns="http://finegameofnil.blogger.com/xml-examples/rename">
<foo someattr1="a" someattr2="b">
</foo>
</mydoc>
I want to change "foo" to "foobar".
I run the the stylesheet:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" fgon="http://finegameofnil.blogger.com/xml-examples/rename" version="2.0">
<xsl:import href="copy.xsl">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" standalone="yes" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8">
<xsl:template match="fgon:foo">
<xsl:element name="foobar">
<xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()">
</xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
I get:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mydoc xmlns="http://finegameofnil.blogger.com/xml-examples/rename">
<foobar xmlns="" someattr1="a" someattr2="b">
</foobar>
</mydoc>
So what's with the xmlns=""? I'm not sure what the semantics of an empty namespace are. It seems to mean the that element and its children are not in any namespace. In a case where you are renaming a document to conform to a schema change you will get a schema validation error.
To prevent this I tried the following stylesheet which explicitly sets the namespace for the target element to the default namespace:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" fgon="http://finegameofnil.blogger.com/xml-examples/rename" version="2.0">
<xsl:import href="copy.xsl">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" standalone="yes" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8">
<xsl:template match="fgon:foo">
<xsl:element name="foobar" namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()">
</xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
Finally, this gives me what I wanted:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mydoc xmlns="http://finegameofnil.blogger.com/xml-examples/rename">
<foobar someattr1="a" someattr2="b">
</foobar>
</mydoc>
The copy.xsl imported in the examples above is from Sal Magnano's "XSLT Cookbook - 2nd Edition".
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<!-- General purpose copy translation stylesheet.
Taken from XSLT Cookbook, 2nd Edition, page 275. -->
<xsl:template match="node() | @*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
