For loops vs. apply-templates

Question

I have recently started using XSLT for some of my XML documents and I have some questions. I add the code below. In the code I have a template that matches ebook elements. I then want to list all the authors that wrote the book. I do it using a for each loop, but I could also apply a template to it. I can't see a clear line when to use loops and when to use templates.

And another question is it normal to just say apply-templates when you now that there wont be other children of the element where you are writing it. In my case in the template that matches the document root I say apply-templates. Then it finds ebooks which is the only child of it, but I could have a "books" element which distinguish between "regular" books, and electronic books then it would just list the character data of the books. I then would have needed to write apply-templates select="ebooks" if I just wanted the ebooks in my final document. So is this a case of that it depends of how well you know your document?

Thank you, here is my code (This is just for practicing):

XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="ebooks.xsl"?>
<ebooks>
    <ebook>
        <title>Advanced Rails Recipes: 84 New Ways to Build Stunning Rails Apps</title>
        <authors>
            <author><name>Mike Clark</name></author>
        </authors>
        <pages>464</pages>
        <isbn>978-0-9787-3922-5</isbn>
        <programming_language>Ruby</programming_language>
        <date>
            <year>2008</year>
            <month>5</month>
            <day>1</day>
        </date>
        <publisher>The Pragmatic Programmers</publisher>
    </ebook>
    ...

XSLT:

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

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <head>
                <title>Library</title>
            </head>
            <body>
                <xsl:apply-templates />            
            </body>
        </html>    
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="ebooks">
        <h1>Ebooks</h1>
        <xsl:apply-templates>
            <xsl:sort select="title"/>
        </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="ebook">
        <h3><xsl:value-of select="title"/></h3>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="date" />

        <xsl:for-each select="authors/author/name">
            <b><xsl:value-of select="."/>,</b>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="date">
        <table border="1">
            <tr>
                <th>Day</th>
                <th>Month</th>
                <th>Year</th>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td><xsl:value-of select="day"/></td>
                <td><xsl:value-of select="month"/></td>
                <td><xsl:value-of select="year"/></td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Tomalak · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-14T18:37:17.427

This question is a bit argumentative, but here is my take on it.

I can't see a clear line when to use loops and when to use templates.

I'd say that you shoud strive to avoid for-each as often as possible in favor of apply-templates.

Using for-each makes your program more complex by adding nesting levels and it's also impossibe to re-use the code inside the for-each block. Using apply-templates will (when done right) generate more more flexible and modular XSLT.

On the other hand: If you write a stylesheet with limited complexity and re-usability or modualarization are not a concern, using for-each may be quicker and easier to follow (for a human reader/maintainer). So it's partly a question of personal preference.

In your case, I would find this elegant:

<xsl:template match="ebook">
  <!-- ... -->
  <xsl:apply-templates select="authors/author" />
  <!-- ... -->
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="authors/author">
  <b>
    <xsl:value-of select="name"/>
    <xsl:if test="position() &lt; last()">,</xsl:if>
  </b>
</xsl:template>

To your other question

And another question is it normal to just say apply-templates when you know that there won't be other children of the element where you are writing it.

When you know there will never be any children in this element, writing apply-templates is pointless.

When done right, XSLT has the ability to flexibly deal with varying input. If you expect there could be children at some point, an apply-templates won't hurt.

A simple apply-templates without select is rather unspecific, both in terms of which (i.e.: all of them) and in what order (i.e.: input document order) nodes will be processed. So you could end up either processing nodes you never wanted to process or node you already have processed earlier.

Since one cannot write a sensible template for unknown nodes, I tend to avoid the unspecific apply-templates and just adapt my stylesheet when the input changes.

+1 I like your points. Most of all the comment about reusability. I agree. — Emiliano Poggi, Jun 14 '11 at 13:04
I'm not sure about this point: "so this template processing easy to parallelize. Not so with for-each loops, they are sequential." There's nothing sequential about for-each, and at present, Saxon-EE is capable of doing parallel execution on a for-each loop, but not on apply-templates. — Michael Kay, Jun 14 '11 at 14:18
@Michael: Is this general or specific to Saxon? I'd correct my assumptions if it were generally untrue. — Tomalak, Jun 14 '11 at 14:42
@Tomalak: Generally there isnt any "order of processing" in a functional language. I am only making this comment after @Michael Kay himself made it. I *don't* consider this issue with your answer as a strong one that justifies downvoting. — Dimitre Novatchev, Jun 14 '11 at 17:18
@Dimitre: Thanks for the clarification. I'll take out the misleading paragraph. — Tomalak, Jun 14 '11 at 18:35

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 14 '11 at 13:28

I do it using a for each loop, but I could also apply a template to it. I can't see a clear line when to use loops and when to use templates.

Using <xsl:for-each> is in no way harmful if one knows exactly how an <xsl:for-each> is processed.

The trouble is that a lot of newcomers to XSLT that have experience in imperative programming take <xsl:for-each> as a substitute of a "loop" in their favorite PL and think that it allows them to perform the impossible -- like incrementing a counter or any other modification of an already defined <xsl:variable>.

One indispensable use of <xsl:for-each> in XSLT 1.0 is to change the current document -- this is often needed in order to be able to use the key() function on a document, different from the current source XML document, for example to efficiently access lookup-table that resides in its own xml document.

On the other side, using <xsl:template> and <xsl:apply-templates> is much more powerful and elegant.

Here are some of the most important differences between the two approaches:

xsl:apply-templates is much richer and deeper than xsl:for-each, even simply because we don't know what code will be applied on the nodes of the selection -- in the general case this code will be different for different nodes of the node-list.
The code that will be applied can be written way after the xsl:apply templates was written and by people that do not know the original author.

The FXSL library's implementation of higher-order functions (HOF) in XSLT wouldn't be possible if XSLT didn't have the <xsl:apply-templates> instruction.

another question is it normal to just say apply-templates when you (k)now that there wont be other children of the element where you are writing it

<xsl:apply-templates/>

is a shorthand for:

<xsl:apply-templates select="child::node()"/>

Even if there are other children of the current node, about which you dont't care, you coud still use the short <xsl:apply-templates> and have another template like that:

<xsl:template match="*"/>

This template ignores ("deletes") any element. You should override it with more specific templates (in XSLT, generally, more specific templates have higher priority and get selected for processing over less-specific templates matching the same node):

<xsl:template match="ebook">
  <!-- Necessary processing here -->
</xsl:template>

I usually don't use <xsl:template match="*"/> but I use another template that matches (and ignores) every text node:

 <xsl:template match="text()"/>

This has typically the same effect as using <xsl:template match="*"/>, because of the way XSLT processes nodes for which there is no matching template. In any such case XSLT uses its built-in templates in what may be called "default processing.

The result of XSLT's default processing of a subtree rooted in an element is to output the concatenation (in document order) of all text-node descendents of this element.

Therefore, preventing the output of any text node using <xsl:template match="text()"/> has the same (null) output result as preventing output from processing an element by using <xsl:template match="*"/>.

Summary:

Templates and the <xsl:apply-templates> instruction is how XSLT implements and deals with polymorphism.
It is in the spirit of XSLT's processing model to use more generic templates matching large classes of nodes and doing some default processing for them and later overriding the generic templates with more specific ones that match and process only nodes we are interested in.

Reference: See this whole thread: http://www.stylusstudio.com/xsllist/200411/post60540.html

Thank you Dimitre for this nice explanation! It is always a pleasure to read your posts. Regards, Peter — Peter, Feb 06 '12 at 08:44
A question that's maybe better late than never ... Dimitre, you mentioned that "One indispensable use of `` in XSLT 1.0 is to change the current document". Is it not possible to do this with ``? — LarsH, Jul 14 '16 at 17:48
@LarsH, Seems like yes, but we will need a full example as confirmation. — Dimitre Novatchev, Jul 14 '16 at 18:28

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 14 '11 at 14:24

Generally I agree with Dimitre's answer. The main reason for advising beginners to use xsl:apply-templates rather than xsl:for-each is that once they're comfortable and experienced with xsl:apply-templates, they won't find it difficult to decide between the two constructs, whereas until they acquire that experience, they will use xsl:for-each inappropriately.

The main benefits of xsl:apply-templates over for-each are that the code adapts better to changing document structures and changing processing requirements. It's difficult to sell that benefit to people who just want to hack some code together and don't care what the world will be like in three years' time, but it's a very real benefit.

Emiliano Poggi · Answer 4 · 2011-06-14T12:21:59.243

It's common to read about xsl:for-each not really necessary in XSLT, but in certain cases only. Normally you should be able to use xsl:apply-templates way.

For instance, your transform can be easily adapted without xsl:for-each, change the ebook template as follows:

<xsl:template match="ebook">
    <h3><xsl:value-of select="title"/></h3>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="date" />
    <xsl:apply-templates select="authors/author/name"/>
</xsl:template>

and adding this one:

<xsl:template match="name">
    <b><xsl:value-of select="."/>,</b>
</xsl:template>

To answer your questions:

I can't see a clear line when to use loops and when to use templates.

In XSLT the difference is known as "push" style versus "pull", about which you can read something good @IBM developerWorks and @XML.com.

My rule about, use loops only when you can not imagine how to get rid of them :)).

another question is it normal to just say apply-templates when you (k)now that there wont be other children of the element where you are writing it

When you "say"

<xsl:apply-templates />

You just are telling the processor to apply templates to all the children of the current context node. So it depends if you want that or not :). You could have different children and the still need to apply templates to any of them. It really depends by the situation.

When you use just <xsl:apply-templates /> you normally need to pay attention how the built-in rules will be applied, and, eventually, shut them up as necessary.

For example, in your case you could have used also:

<xsl:template match="ebook">
    <h3><xsl:value-of select="title"/></h3>
    <xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="isbn|programming_language|publisher|pages|title"/>

Hope this helps.

It's also worth noting that an unspecific `apply-templates` creates output in document order, which might not always be desirable. Especially if document order is not predictable. — Tomalak, Jun 14 '11 at 13:23

For loops vs. apply-templates

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