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Tutorial Reference

XSLT <xsl:import> Element

How to use the <xsl:import> element in XSLT to merge stylesheets, control precedence, and apply imported templates with the xsl:apply-imports instruction.

The <xsl:import> element is used to import the contents of one stylesheet into another.

Importing a style sheet has higher precedence over imported stylesheet.

<xsl:import> Element

Syntax

The syntax of <xsl:import> is as follows:

<xsl:import href="uri">  
</xsl:import>

Attributes

The table describes the meaning of the attributes of <xsl:import>:

Name Description
href Used to pass the path of xslt stylesheet to be imported.

Example

Let's see an example:

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

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
	<xsl:import href="books.xsl"/>
		<xsl:template match="/">
			<xsl:apply-imports/>
		</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
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>
			<h2>The Bookstore</h2>
			<table border="1">
				<tr bgcolor="#6565d5">
					<th>Title</th>
					<th>Author</th>
					<th>Year</th>
					<th>Price</th>
				</tr>  
				<xsl:for-each select="bookstore/book">
					<tr>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="author"/></td>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="year"/></td>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="price"/></td>
					</tr>
				</xsl:for-each>
			</table>
		</body>
	</html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
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