XML to CSV Using XSLT

Pablo_Fernandez_7595 0
Viewed 144697

I have the following XML document:

<projects>
  <project>
   <name>Shockwave</name> 
   <language>Ruby</language> 
   <owner>Brian May</owner> 
   <state>New</state> 
   <startDate>31/10/2008 0:00:00</startDate> 
  </project>
  <project>
   <name>Other</name> 
   <language>Erlang</language> 
   <owner>Takashi Miike</owner> 
   <state> Canceled </state> 
   <startDate>07/11/2008 0:00:00</startDate> 
  </project>
...

And I'd like to get this from the transformation (XSLT) result:

Shockwave,Ruby,Brian May,New,31/10/2008 0:00:00
Other,Erlang,Takashi Miike,Cancelled,07/11/2008 0:00:00

Does anyone know the XSLT to achieve this? I'm using .net in case that matters.

csv xslt xml
4 Answers

Here is a version with configurable parameters that you can set programmatically:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="text" encoding="utf-8" />

  <xsl:param name="delim" select="','" />
  <xsl:param name="quote" select="'&quot;'" />
  <xsl:param name="break" select="'&#xA;'" />

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="projects/project" />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="project">
    <xsl:apply-templates />
    <xsl:if test="following-sibling::*">
      <xsl:value-of select="$break" />
    </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <!-- remove normalize-space() if you want keep white-space at it is --> 
    <xsl:value-of select="concat($quote, normalize-space(), $quote)" />
    <xsl:if test="following-sibling::*">
      <xsl:value-of select="$delim" />
    </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="text()" />
</xsl:stylesheet>
Tomalak_187710

Found an XML transform stylesheet here (wayback machine link, site itself is in german)

The stylesheet added here could be helpful:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text" encoding="iso-8859-1"/>

<xsl:strip-space elements="*" />

<xsl:template match="/*/child::*">
<xsl:for-each select="child::*">
<xsl:if test="position() != last()">"<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>",    </xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="position()  = last()">"<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>"<xsl:text>&#xD;</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Perhaps you want to remove the quotes inside the xsl:if tags so it doesn't put your values into quotes, depending on where you want to use the CSV file.

schnaader_340650

This CsvEscape function is XSLT 1.0 and escapes column values ,, ", and newlines like RFC 4180 or Excel. It makes use of the fact that you can recursively call XSLT templates:

  • The template EscapeQuotes replaces all double quotes with 2 double quotes, recursively from the start of the string.
  • The template CsvEscape checks if the text contains a comma or double quote, and if so surrounds the whole string with a pair of double quotes and calls EscapeQuotes for the string.

Example usage: xsltproc xmltocsv.xslt file.xml > file.csv

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

  <xsl:template name="EscapeQuotes">
    <xsl:param name="value"/>
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="contains($value,'&quot;')">
    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($value,'&quot;')"/>
    <xsl:text>&quot;&quot;</xsl:text>
    <xsl:call-template name="EscapeQuotes">
      <xsl:with-param name="value" select="substring-after($value,'&quot;')"/>
    </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
    <xsl:value-of select="$value"/>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="CsvEscape">
    <xsl:param name="value"/>
    <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="contains($value,',')">
      <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="EscapeQuotes">
    <xsl:with-param name="value" select="$value"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:when test="contains($value,'&#xA;')">
      <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="EscapeQuotes">
    <xsl:with-param name="value" select="$value"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:when test="contains($value,'&quot;')">
      <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="EscapeQuotes">
    <xsl:with-param name="value" select="$value"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:value-of select="$value"/>
    </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
  
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:text>project,name,language,owner,state,startDate</xsl:text>
    <xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>
    <xsl:for-each select="projects/project">
      <xsl:call-template name="CsvEscape"><xsl:with-param name="value" select="normalize-space(name)"/></xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="CsvEscape"><xsl:with-param name="value" select="normalize-space(language)"/></xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="CsvEscape"><xsl:with-param name="value" select="normalize-space(owner)"/></xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="CsvEscape"><xsl:with-param name="value" select="normalize-space(state)"/></xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="CsvEscape"><xsl:with-param name="value" select="normalize-space(startDate)"/></xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
user_2025040
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