Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) 5.0 for Microsoft Office - XSLT Reference

<xsl:processing-instruction> Element

Generates a processing instruction node in the output.

<xsl:processing-instruction
  name = "pi-name">
</xsl: processing-instruction>

Attributes

name
Required. The NCName of the processing instruction.

Element Information

Number of occurrences Unlimited
Parent elements xsl:attribute, xsl:comment, xsl:copy, xsl:element, xsl:fallback, xsl:for-each, xsl:if, xsl:message, xsl:otherwise, xsl:param, xsl:processing-instruction, xsl:template, xsl:variable, xsl:when, xsl:with-param, output elements
Child elements xsl:apply-imports, xsl:apply-templates, xsl:call-template, xsl:choose, xsl:copy, xsl:copy-of, xsl:fallback, xsl:for-each, xsl:if, xsl:message, xsl:number, xsl:text, xsl:value-of, xsl:variable

Remarks

The <xsl:processing-instruction> element generates a processing instruction node in the output. The name is indicated by the name attribute. The content of the element provides the rest of the processing instruction.

The XML declaration is not a processing instruction, and should be generated by setting attributes on an <xsl:output> element.

Example

This example shows a template that generates the XML declaration and a style sheet processing instruction in the output.

XML File (customers.xml)

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="pi.xsl" ?>
<customers>
<customer>
   <name>James Smith</name>
   <address>123 Elm St.</address>
   <phone>(123) 456-7890</phone>
</customer>
<customer>
   <name>Amy Jones</name>
   <address>456 Oak Ave.</address>
   <phone>(156) 789-0123</phone>
</customer>
</customers>

XSLT File (pi.xsl)

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
      xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" >

<xsl:output method='xml' version='1.0'/>
<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:processing-instruction name="xml-stylesheet">
  <xsl:text>type="text/xsl" href="style.xsl"</xsl:text>
  </xsl:processing-instruction>
  <xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="@* | *">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>

Try It!

  1. Copy the code above and save it in appropriate files on your local drive.
  2. Run the example, using the msxsl.exe utitility Other Resources from the command prompt, as follows: 
    msxsl customers.xml pi.xsl -o new-cust.xml

Output

The result of this transformation is the same XML file with a new style sheet embeded in it. The output file, new-cust.xml, should look as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="style.xsl" ?>
<customers>
 <customer>
  <name>James Smith</name>
  <address>123 Elm St.</address>
  <phone>(123) 456-7890</phone>
 </customer>
 <customer>
  <name>Amy Jones</name>
  <address>456 Oak Ave.</address>
  <phone>(156) 789-0123</phone>
 </customer>
</customers>

See Also

Generating Comments, Processing Instructions, and Elements