Location path specifies the location of node in XML document. This path can be absolute or relative. If location path starts with root node or with ‘/’ then it is an absolute path. Following are few of the example locating the elements using absolute path.
/class/student − select student nodes within class root node.
<xsl:for-each select = "/class/student">
/class/student/firstname − select firstname of a student node within class root node.
<p><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student/firstname"/></p>
Example
In this example, we’ve created a sample XML document students.xml and its stylesheet document students.xsl which uses the XPath expressions.
Following is the sample XML used.
students.xml
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type = "text/xsl" href = "students.xsl"?>
<class>
<student rollno = "393">
<firstname>Dinkar</firstname>
<lastname>Kad</lastname>
<nickname>Dinkar</nickname>
<marks>85</marks>
</student>
<student rollno = "493">
<firstname>Vaneet</firstname>
<lastname>Gupta</lastname>
<nickname>Vinni</nickname>
<marks>95</marks>
</student>
<student rollno = "593">
<firstname>Jasvir</firstname>
<lastname>Singh</lastname>
<nickname>Jazz</nickname>
<marks>90</marks>
</student>
</class>
students.xsl
<?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>
<h3>Details of each Students. </h3>
<table border = "1">
<tr bgcolor = "#9acd32">
<th>Roll No</th>
<th>First Name</th>
<th>Last Name</th>
<th>Nick Name</th>
<th>Marks</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[1]/@rollno"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[1]/firstname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[1]/lastname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[1]/nickname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[1]/marks"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select = "/class/student/@rollno"/>
</td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[2]/firstname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[2]/lastname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[2]/nickname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[2]/marks"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[3]/@rollno"/>
</td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[3]/firstname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[3]/lastname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[3]/nickname"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select = "/class/student[3]/marks"/></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Verify the output
