<xsl:apply-templates select="ShipmentDetails/Package/Item"/> Nothing. The CSV was empty. He checked his XPath. It was perfect. He checked his spelling. Perfect. He replayed Alistair’s lecture. The answer was maddeningly simple: context . He was in the wrong context. The current node was still at the root. He needed ./ShipmentDetails...
His job was to transform this beastly <ShipmentOrder> XML into a flat, friendly <OrderRecord> CSV for an ancient warehouse database. His tool? XSLT. He had a weekend to learn it. udemy xslt
He wrote his final template:
<xsl:template match="@*|node()"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> It looked like magic. A recursive mirror. Leo stared at it for ten minutes, tracing the logic. Then he had his Eureka moment. This is the power of XSLT. You don't iterate with for-each (Alistair called that "imperative blasphemy"). You let the templates find the nodes and decide their fate. It was perfect
The first section was a revelation. Alistair didn't teach syntax. He taught philosophy. "Declarative thinking," he called it. "Don't tell the computer how to find the data. Tell it what you want, and let the template rules do the walking." He replayed Alistair’s lecture