XSLT self-closing tags issue

Question

I am using xslt to transform an xml file to html. The .net xslt engine keeps serving me self-closing tags for empty tags.

Example:

<div class="test"></div> 

becomes

<div class="test" />

The former is valid html, while the latter is illegal html and renders badly. My question is : How do I tell the xslt engine (XslCompiledTransform) to not use self-closing tags.

If it's not possible, how can I tell my browser (IE6+ in this case) to interpret self-closing tags correctly.

Solution 1

If you are using XmlWriter as your ouput stream, use HTMLTextWriter instead. XMLWriter will reformat your HTML output back to XML.

Solution 2

Change your xsl:output method to be html (instead of xml).

Or add it if you haven't already got the element

<xsl:output method="html"/>

Solution 3

A workaround can be to insert a comment element to force generation of non self closing:

<script type="text/javascript" src="nowhere.js">
<xsl:comment></xsl:comment>
</script>

It is not a pretty soloution, but it works :-)

/Sten

Solution 4

This is related to the XslCompiledTransform class

here is a workaround:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nareshjoshi/archive/2009/01/15/how-to-force-non-self-closing-tags-for-empty-nodes-when-using-xslcompiledtransform-class.aspx

Solution 5

For me it was a problem in the script tag. I solved it by filling it with a semicolon (;)

<script type="text/javascript" src="somewhere.js">;</script>

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