xslt expects element instead of xsl:for-each

Question

Since I am a beginner in xslt/xsd-programming, I am using XMLSpy to create a xml2xml transformation. For both xml I have got a xsd. Unfortunately, the following code piece is not valid.

<xsl:template match="/">
    <table xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="table.xsd" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
        <xsl:for-each select="table/body/line">
            <row>
            </row>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </table>
</xsl:template>

The error message says that the row element is expected after table.
Details (translated): element <xsl:for-each> was not expected of type {anonymous} of element <table>.

The problem can be solved by removing the reference to the xsd or removing the for-each statement.
However, I cannot figure out what is wrong. To my understanding the for-each-loop should just repeat the <row> tags for each line in the first xml.
Here is part of the xsd of the target.

<xs:element name="table">
    <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element ref="row" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
            <xs:element ref="Metadata" minOccurs="0"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

Well, the schema defines how the result of the XSLT transformation is supposed to look, not how the XSLT looks like. The XSLT code is usually a mixture of XSLT instructions and result elements and obviously that way does not adhere to the schema for the result. So when writing XSLT I would simply ignore the message. Or do you really get an error that prevents you from running the XSLT transformation in XMLSpy? — Martin Honnen, Jun 30 '16 at 10:12
Actually, I had not tried to run the XSL transformation... but it does work. I guess I will ignore the message for now. Thanks. — F. Hall, Jun 30 '16 at 10:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 30 '16 at 11:05

I suspect that Altova is using the presence of the attribute xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="table.xsd" as a signal meaning "please validate this element against the schema in table.xsd"; which is not what you wanted, because of course it's not valid against that schema, as it contains XSLT instructions to create the required elements, rather than containing the required elements themselves.

To work around this, try generating the attribute using xsl:attribute:

 <table xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <xsl:attribute name="xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation">table.xsd</xsl:attribute>
   <xsl:for-each select="table/body/line">
            <row/>
   </xsl:for-each>
 </table>

That seems to be a possibility as the message no longer appears when using your code. (A bit surprising since there are examples from Altova which use the same method I used and which are valid). Thank you. — F. Hall, Jun 30 '16 at 12:01

xslt expects element instead of xsl:for-each

1 Answers1