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Full coverage of XSLT 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 elements and XPath functions: - 59 XSLT elements (xsl:stylesheet → xsl:use-accumulators) - 170 XPath functions (1.0 node/string/numeric/boolean, 2.0 sequence/ date/QName/string, 3.0 HOF/map/array/JSON/streaming) Each page: description, parameters table, return value, 2 runnable Saxon examples with input XML + stylesheet + output, notes, cross-links. xsltCompletions.js: all 229 entries now have blogSlug for hover links. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
4.2 KiB
4.2 KiB
title, description, date, version, versionLabel, category, syntax, tags
| title | description | date | version | versionLabel | category | syntax | tags | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| serialize() | Serializes a node or sequence to a string using the W3C serialization specification and specified output parameters. | 2026-04-19T00:00:00Z | 3.0 | XSLT 3.0 | JSON function | serialize(nodes, output-declaration?) |
|
Description
serialize() converts an XDM sequence of nodes or atomic values to a string, using the W3C XSLT/XQuery serialization specification. It is the programmatic equivalent of the output written by the stylesheet itself, but it produces a string value that can be stored in a variable, inserted into content, or written to a secondary result tree.
The optional second argument is an output declaration: either an xsl:output element node (produced with xsl:output and referenced via the output: namespace) or a map of serialization parameter names to values. Common parameters include method ("xml", "html", "text", "json"), indent, encoding, and omit-xml-declaration.
Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
nodes |
item()* |
Yes | The sequence of nodes or atomic values to serialize. |
output-declaration |
item()? |
No | An xsl:output element or a map(xs:string, item()*) of serialization parameters. |
Return value
xs:string — the serialized representation of the input as a string.
Examples
Serializing an XML fragment to a string for embedding
Input XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<page>
<title>Hello</title>
<body>World</body>
</page>
Stylesheet:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/page">
<xsl:variable name="xml-string"
select="serialize(., map{'method':'xml','indent':true(),'omit-xml-declaration':true()})"/>
<document>
<source-as-text><xsl:value-of select="$xml-string"/></source-as-text>
<length><xsl:value-of select="string-length($xml-string)"/></length>
</document>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output:
<document>
<source-as-text><page>
<title>Hello</title>
<body>World</body>
</page></source-as-text>
<length>47</length>
</document>
Serializing XML data to JSON format
Input XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<items>
<item key="name">Widget</item>
<item key="price">9.99</item>
<item key="in-stock">true</item>
</items>
Stylesheet:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:template match="/items">
<xsl:variable name="xml-json">
<fn:map>
<fn:string key="name"><xsl:value-of select="item[@key='name']"/></fn:string>
<fn:number key="price"><xsl:value-of select="item[@key='price']"/></fn:number>
<fn:boolean key="in-stock"><xsl:value-of select="item[@key='in-stock']"/></fn:boolean>
</fn:map>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:value-of select="serialize($xml-json, map{'method':'json','indent':true()})"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output:
{
"name": "Widget",
"price": 9.99,
"in-stock": true
}
Notes
- When the
methodis"json", the input must be a single node in the W3C JSON-XML format (same asxml-to-json()accepts). Usexml-to-json()directly for this case if you do not need other serialization control. serialize()is often used in combination withresult-documentalternatives: when you need the XML string inside the transformation rather than written to a file.- Atomic values in the input sequence are serialized using their string representation, separated by spaces by default.
- The
mapform of the second argument uses the same parameter names asxsl:outputattributes, but as strings:"indent","method","omit-xml-declaration","encoding", etc.