XSLT Transformer
Apply XSLT to XML using your browser's native XSLTProcessor
How XSLT transformation works
XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, HTML, or plain text. This tool uses your browser's built-in XSLTProcessor API — the same engine used by all modern browsers — so the transformation happens entirely client-side with no data leaving your browser. Supports XSLT 1.0, which covers most real-world use cases: template matching, xsl:for-each, xsl:if, xsl:choose, and string/math functions.
Built and maintained by Meet Shah · Last updated
What this tool is used for
- Applying a stylesheet to XML to see the output it produces.
- Testing an XSLT template against real data before deploying it.
- Understanding an inherited transform by running it.
- Converting an XML document into HTML or another XML shape.
- Debugging a template that produces empty output.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is XSLT for?
- Transforming one XML document into another format — XML, HTML or text — using a stylesheet of template rules. It is declarative: you describe what each matched node produces, and the processor walks the tree applying the best-matching template.
- Which version do browsers support?
- XSLT 1.0 only, through `XSLTProcessor`. Versions 2.0 and 3.0 added regular expressions, grouping, and proper typing, but no browser implements them — so a stylesheet written against 2.0 needs Saxon or an equivalent processor outside the browser.
- How does template matching work?
- By XPath pattern, with the most specific match winning. `<xsl:apply-templates>` recurses into children and picks a template for each, which is why an XSLT stylesheet has no explicit loop over the document — the recursion is the control flow.
- What is the built-in template rule?
- The default behaviour when nothing matches: elements recurse into their children, and text nodes are copied to the output. That is why an incomplete stylesheet emits all the document's text with no markup — a confusing result that is the processor working as specified.
- Is XSLT still worth learning?
- In publishing, finance and government data it remains entrenched, and for XML-to-XML work nothing else is as direct. For new work the pull is toward general-purpose languages with an XML library, which trades declarative concision for familiarity.
Common errors and gotchas
- Ignoring namespaces, which is the most common reason a template matches nothing.
- Assuming XSLT 2.0 or 3.0 features work, when browsers implement 1.0 only.
- Overlooking that the default template rules copy text you thought you had excluded.
- Expecting output indentation to be controllable, which varies by processor.
- Debugging the stylesheet when the input document was the problem.
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