XSLT: How to discard unwanted HTML nodes from source? - xslt

Question

I am using XSLT 1.0, and using xsltproc on OS X Yosemite.
The source content is HTML; the target content is XML.
The issue is a fairly common one. I want all "uninteresting"
nodes simply to be discarded from the output. I've seen catch-all
directives like this:
<xsl:template match="node()|script"/>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
This is close to what I need. But unfortunately, it's too strong when I need to add another template that visits one of the text nodes caught by node(). For example, suppose I added this template:
<xsl:template match="a/div[#class='location']/br">
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
which simply replaces certain <br/> elements with spaces.
Well, node() precludes this latter template from taking effect,
because the relevant text node containing the line-break is discarded
already!
Well, to correct the issue, here's what I have done in lieu of the catch-all node():
<xsl:template match="html/head|div[#id='banner_parent']|button|ul|div[#id='feed_title']|span|div[#class='submit_event']|script"/>
But this is precisely the problem: I am now piecing together a template
whose matching criteria is likely to be error-prone when the source
content changes.
Is there a simpler directive that would accomplish the same thing? I'm aiming for something like this:
<xsl:template match="node()[not(locations)]|script"/>
Thanks.

Answer 1

If i understood correctly, you want only some nodes in the output and the rest you dont care abour, in this example I try to catch only li elements and throw the rest away.. not sure if this is what you want though http://xsltransform.net/gWmuiKk
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:transform xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<xsl:output method="html" doctype-public="XSLT-compat" omit-xml-declaration="yes" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />
<!-- Lets pretend li is interesting for you -->
<xsl:template match="li">
<xsl:text>Interesting Node Only!
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="#*|node()">
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:transform>