xsl:value of and apply template to inside element

Question

what can I do if I have this:

<e1>t1<e2>t2</e2></e1>

and I want to translate with XSLT in:

<c1>t1<c2>t2</c2></c1>

I've tried with:

<xsl:template match="e1">
  <c1>
     <xsl:value-of select=".">
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
     </xsl:value-of>
  </c1>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="e2">
  <c2>
     <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </c2>
</xsl:template>

But i receive a mistake as value-of should be empty.

Answer 1

xsl:value-of must be empty, no doubt. But you don't need anything inside it. The stylesheet below is an identity transform with two exceptions, namely replacing the element names of e1 and e2.

It is quite generic in the sense that it replaces e1 and e2 in any XML document and leaves all the rest untouched.

Stylesheet

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

   <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

   <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
      <xsl:copy>
         <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
      </xsl:copy>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="e1">
      <c1>
         <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
      </c1>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="e2">
      <c2>
         <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
      </c2>
   </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<c1>t1<c2>t2</c2></c1>