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4/8/2010

Expressions are used in XSL Transformations (XSLT) for the following purposes.

  • Selecting nodes for processing.

  • Specifying conditions for different ways of processing a node.

  • Generating text to be inserted in the result tree.

Expressions occur as the value of certain attributes on XSLT-defined elements and within curly braces in attribute value templates.

Expression evaluation occurs with respect to a context. In XSLT, an outermost expression (that is, an expression that is not part of another expression) gets its context as follows.

  • The context node comes from the current node.

  • The context position comes from the position of the current node in the current node list; the first position is 1.

  • The context size comes from the size of the current node list.

  • The variable bindings are the bindings in scope on the element that has the attribute in which the expression occurs.

  • The set of name space declarations are those in scope on the element that has the attribute in which the expression occurs.

  • The function library consists of those found at XPath Functions; it is an error for an expression to include a call to any other function.

See Also

Concepts

Patterns

Other Resources

XQL Application Development