ELEMENT:  xsl:attribute-set
<xsl:attribute-set
  name="qname"
  use-attribute-sets="qnames"
>
</xsl:attribute-set>
 
The xsl:attribute-set element defines and names a set containing zero or more xsl:attribute elements. Each of the xsl:attribute elements are applied to the output in the order that they occur inside the xsl:attribute-set element. An xsl:attribute element allows you to create an attribute node, define a value, and add it to the output.
 
The xsl:attribute-set element can only be a child of the xsl:stylesheet or the xsl:transform elements.
 
The concept is that you can create a set of attributes that can be applied more than once by simply calling the attribute set by name.
 
This is not a self-closing element. The separate closing element is mandatory.
 
name="qname"
 
The mandatory name attribute is the name of the attribute set. It must be a qname. A qname is a qualified name that is composed of an optional namespace prefix, a colon, which is only present if there is a prefix, and a mandatory XML name (for example, xsl:zipcode or zipcode).
 
use-attribute-sets="qnames"
 
The optional use-attribute-sets attribute is a white-space-delimited list of one or more qnames of attribute sets. In other words, it is a collection of attribute set names. Each of the xsl:attribute elements in all of the attribute sets are applied to the output in the order in which they occur in the use-attribute-sets attribute. This is done by adding the use-attribute-sets attribute to the HTML tag or XSLT element using the following syntax:
 
<table xsl:use-attribute-sets="name">
 
<xsl:copy use-attribute-sets="name"> ... </xsl:copy>
 
We use the DevGuru Staff List XML file for our example with the following header:
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="xslt_example_attributeset.xsl"?>
 and we name it: xslt_example_attributeset.xml
 
In this example we set the border, cellpadding, and cellspacing values for a table. We only apply the attribute set to one table, but it can be applied to any number of tables to give a similar look.
 
Code for xslt_example_attributeset.xsl:
 
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

<xsl:attribute-set name="set_table">
<xsl:attribute name="border">
5
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name="cellpadding">
15
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name="cellspacing">
10
</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:attribute-set>

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<table xsl:use-attribute-sets="set_table">
<xsl:for-each select="devguru_staff/programmer">
<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select="name" /></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="age" /></td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
 
Output:
 
Click to view output in separate window - requires Internet Explorer
 
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