Text Value Templates

Text Value Templates (TVT) allow XPath expressions inside {...} in text content, similar to how Attribute Value Templates (AVT) work in attribute values.

Enabling TVT

Add expand-text="yes" to the stylesheet root element:

<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    expand-text="yes">

  <xsl:template match="person">
    <p>Hello {name}, you are {age} years old.</p>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Without expand-text="yes", the text {name} would be output literally.

Where TVT applies

When expand-text="yes" is active, expressions in {...} are evaluated in:

• Text content of literal result elements: <p>Value: {$x}</p>
• Text content of xsl:text: <xsl:text>Total: {sum(item/price)}</xsl:text>
• Any text node in the template body

Escaping braces

Use doubled braces to output literal { and }:

<xsl:template match="data">
  <code>map{{key: {$value}}}</code>
  <!-- Output: map{key: 42} -->
</xsl:template>

Overriding per element

Individual elements can override the inherited expand-text setting:

<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    expand-text="yes">

  <!-- TVT active here -->
  <xsl:template match="data">
    <p>Computed: {$value}</p>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- TVT disabled for this variable (e.g. to preserve JSON braces) -->
  <xsl:variable name="json" expand-text="no">{"key": "value"}</xsl:variable>

</xsl:stylesheet>

On literal result elements, use the xsl:expand-text attribute (in the XSL namespace):

<pre xsl:expand-text="no">function() { return {x: 1}; }</pre>

AVT vs TVT