The <xsl:value-of> element is used to extract the value of a selected node.
The <xsl:value-of> Element
The <xsl:value-of> element can be used to extract the value of an XML element and add it to the output stream of the transformation:
Example
<?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>My CD Collection</h2>
<table border="1">
<tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
<th>Title</th>
<th>Artist</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select="catalog/cd/title"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="catalog/cd/artist"/></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Try it Yourself »
Example Explained
Note: The select attribute, in the example above, contains an XPath expression. An XPath expression works like navigating a file system; a forward slash (/) selects subdirectories.
The result from the example above was a little disappointing; only one line of data was copied from the XML document to the output. In the next chapter you will learn how to use the <xsl:for-each> element to loop through the XML elements, and display all of the records.