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XSLT <xsl:value-of>

How to use the XSLT <xsl:value-of> element to extract and output values from XML nodes using XPath expressions and manage special character handling with disable-output-escaping.

XSLT <xsl:value-of>

The <xsl:value-of> element extracts the value of a selected node.

The <xsl:value-of> element can be used to select the value of an XML element and add it to the output.

Syntax

<xsl:value-of select="expression" disable-output-escaping="yes|no" />

Attributes

Attribute Value Required/Optional Description
select expression Required An XPath expression that specifies which node/attribute to extract the value from. It works like navigating a file system where a forward slash (/) selects subdirectories.
disable-output-escaping yes | no Optional "yes" indicates that special characters (like <) should be output as is. "no" indicates that special characters (like <) should be output as &lt;. Default is "no"

Example

For the following examples, consider the XML document about a bookstore shown below:

books.xmlxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="books.xsl"?>

<bookstore>
	<book category="children">
		<title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
		<author>J K. Rowling</author>
		<year>2005</year>
		<price>29.99</price>
	</book>
	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">XQuery Tips</title>
		<author>Tom Nolan</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>39.99</price>
	</book>
	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">Learn XML</title>
		<author>Tutorial Reference</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>9.99</price>
	</book>
</bookstore>

Example 1

The example below puts the values from the first title and author elements and puts it in a table:

books.xslxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <body>
    <h1>The bookstore</h1>
    <table border="1">
      <tr bgcolor="#6565d5">
        <th>Title</th>
        <th>Author</th>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="bookstore/book/title" /></td>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="bookstore/book/author" /></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Example 2

The example below loops trough each book element and creates a table row with the values from title and author for each book element:

books.xslxml
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <body>
    <h1>The bookstore</h1>
    <table border="1">
      <tr bgcolor="#6565d5">
        <th>Title</th>
        <th>Artist</th>
      </tr>
      <xsl:for-each select="bookstore/book">
      <tr>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="title" /></td>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="author" /></td>
      </tr>
      </xsl:for-each>
    </table>
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
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