<xsl:comment>  
Allows you to create a comment in the output document. Comments are sometimes used to add legal notices, disclaimers, or information about when the output document was created. Another useful application of the <xsl:comment> element is the generation of CSS definitions or JavaScript code in an HTML document.
 
Category

Instruction
 
Required Attributes

None.
 
Optional Attributes

None.
 
Content

An XSLT template.
 
Appears in

<xsl:comment> appears in a template.
 
Defined in

XSLT section 7.4, Creating Comments.

 
Example

Here's a stylesheet that generates a comment to define CSS styles in an HTML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

  <xsl:output method="html"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
      <head>
        <title>XSLT and CSS Demo</title>
        <style>
          <xsl:comment> 
            p.big      {font-size: 125%; font-weight: bold} 
            p.green    {color: green; font-weight: bold}
            p.red      {color: red; font-style: italic}
          </xsl:comment>
        </style>
      </head>
      <body>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="list/title"/>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="list/listitem"/>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="title">
    <p class="big"><xsl:value-of select="."/></p>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="listitem">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="position() mod 2">
        <p class="green"><xsl:value-of select="."/></p>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <p class="red"><xsl:value-of select="."/></p>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
  
</xsl:stylesheet>

This stylesheet creates three CSS styles inside an HTML comment. We'll apply the stylesheet to this document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<list xml:lang="en">
  <title>Albums I've bought recently:</title>
  <listitem>The Sacred Art of Dub</listitem>
  <listitem>Only the Poor Man Feel It</listitem>
  <listitem>Excitable Boy</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="sw">Aki Special</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="en-gb">Combat Rock</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="zu">Talking Timbuktu</listitem>
  <listitem xml:lang="jz">The Birth of the Cool</listitem>
</list>

The stylesheet will apply one CSS style to the <title> element and will alternate between two CSS styles for the <listitem>s. Here's the generated HTML:

<html>
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>XSLT and CSS Demo</title>
<style>
<!-- 
            p.big      {font-size: 125%; font-weight: bold} 
            p.green    {color: green; font-weight: bold}
            p.red      {color: red; font-style: italic}
          -->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p class="big">Albums I've bought recently:</p>
<p class="green">The Sacred Art of Dub</p>
<p class="red">Only the Poor Man Feel It</p>
<p class="green">Excitable Boy</p>
<p class="red">Aki Special</p>
<p class="green">Combat Rock</p>
<p class="red">Talking Timbuktu</p>
<p class="green">The Birth of the Cool</p>
</body>
</html>

When rendered, the document looks like Figure A-6.

Document with generated comment nodes