XSLT: How to represent OR in a "match" attribute?

Question

I want to perform a series of operations on elements that matched the name "A" or "B". I'm thinking of something like this below, but it doesn't work.

<xsl:template match= " 'A' or 'B'" >      <!-- whatever I want to do here --> </xsl:template> 

Couldn't find the appropriate XSLT language reference for it. Please help! Thanks!!

Answer 1

Try this:

<xsl:template match= "A | B" > 

See this page for details.

Answer 2

Generally A | B is the right way to do this. But the pipe character is basically a union of two complete XPath expressions. It can be annoying to use it in a case like this:

/red/yellow/blue/green/gold | red/orange/blue/green/gold 

since you're repeating the entirety of the expression except for the one small piece of it's that changing.

In cases like this, it often makes sense to use a predicate and the name() function instead:

/red/*[name() = 'yellow' or name()='orange']/blue/green/gold 

This technique gives you access to a much broader range of logical operations. It's also (conceivably) faster, as the XPath navigator only has to traverse the nodes it's testing once.