XSL for-each loop is not working - xslt

Question

I'm using Java to transform an XML document to text:
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(stylesource);
transformer.transform(source, result);
This seems to work except when there are colons in the XML document. I tried this example:
XML file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<test:TEST >
<one.two:three id="my id" name="my name" description="my description" >
</one.two:three>
<one.two:three id="some id" name="some name" description="some description" />
</test:TEST>
XSL file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:xmi="http://www.omg.org/XMI"
xmlns:one.two="http://www.one.two/one.two:three" >
<xsl:output method="text" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:variable name="myVariable">one.two:three</xsl:variable>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*[substring(name(),1,9)='test:TEST']" >
<xsl:for-each select="./$myVariable">
inFirstLoop
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each select="./one.two:three">
inSecondLoop
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
The result of the transformation I'm getting is a single line:
inFirstLoop
I'm expecting 4 lines of output
inFirstLoop
inFirstLoop
inSecondLoop
inSecondLoop
How do I fix this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

There are multiple things wrong here. I'm surprised your transformation managed to run at all, instead of failing on parse errors and other errors.
One big problem is that your input XML uses namespace prefixes (that's what the colons are for) without declaring them. Declarations like
xmlns:one.two="http://www.one.two/one.two:three"
need to be in the source XML, as well as in the XSL. Otherwise your source XML is not well-formed (according to namespace rules).
A second problem is the XPath expression
./$myVariable
which should have thrown an error. I think what you wanted was
*[name() = $myVariable]
The third change I would make is not an error in the XSLT, but just a poor way of doing things... If you want to match <test:TEST>, you should use namespace tools to refer to namespaces. Therefore, instead of
<xsl:template match="*[substring(name(),1,9)='test:TEST']" >
use
<xsl:template match="test:TEST">
Much cleaner. Then you need to put in a namespace declaration on the outermost element of the stylesheet, as you already have to do in the input XML document:
xmlns:test="...test..."
XML namespaces, like driving a car, are a topic better learned from a little training than by trial-and-error. Reading a brief article like this will help you avoid a lot of confusion and pain down the road.