Are you using XSLT 2.0? The xsl:namespace instruction was invented to make
this kind of job easier.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Greif [mailto:jeff.greif@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 16 October 2008 22:45
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Creating namespace declarations solely for 
> QName attribute values
> 
> We are trying to replace namespaces consistently in the 
> namespace declarations of a document, thus preserving the 
> prefixes so the QName attribute values remain valid.
> 
> That is, given a source document like this:
> 
> <schema targetNamespace="urn:target" xmlns:t="urn:target"
> xmlns:i="urn:imported">
>  <import namespace="urn:imported"/>
>  <element name="something" type="i:ImportedType"/> </schema>
> 
> The key feature of this document is that no element or 
> attribute in the document is in either of the explicitly 
> declared namespaces.
> These namespaces are only referenced explicitly in attribute 
> values and implicitly in the QName-valued attribute 'type'.
> 
> The idea is to change urn:target to urn:target1 and urn:imported to
> urn:imported1 (based on a map of these conversions read into 
> the XSLT using the document() function).  None of the 
> namespaces involved in this conversion can be declared in the 
> stylesheet, but are determined from the map.
> 
> We know how to change the value of any attribute, the 
> namespace of any element or attribute using this map, but we 
> don't see yet how to change the association of a prefix with 
> a namespace, so that the prefix 'i' will be associated with 
> the namespace "urn:imported1" in the result document, 
> effectively changing the namespace implied by the value of 
> the 'type' attribute in the result document, *when there is 
> no element or attribute in the source document that has the 
> namespace corresponding to that prefix*.
> 
> We are trying to avoid having to know which are attributes 
> with QName values and having to transform their values to 
> somehow conform to prefixes used in the result doc.
> 
> Is there a way to do this in XSLT, given that matching on 
> namespace nodes is not possible, and we have been unable to 
> find a way to create namespace nodes in a template except by 
> naming an element or attribute using the prefix in question?  
> Would a solution involve creating an attribute with the given 
> prefix and namespace, to change the namespace nodes of the 
> containing element, while avoiding having the attribute 
> appearing in the result document?
> 
> Jeff