5.15. Points to Note Regarding XSL Support

there is a need to perform a fragment transformation, as opposed to the transformation of a whole message.

there is a need to use other Smooks functionality to perform additional operations on the message, such as splitting or persistence.

XSL templating is only supported through the DOM filter. It is not supported through the SAX filter. This can (depending on the XSL being applied) result in lower performance when compared to a SAX-based application of XSL.

Smooks applies XSL templates on a per-message fragment basis. This can be very useful for fragmenting XSLs, but do not assume that a template written for a stand-alone context will automatically work in Smooks without modification. For this reason, Smooks handles XSLs targeted at the document root node differently in that it applies the template to the DOM Document Node (rather than the root DOM Element.)

most XSLs contain a template that is matched to the root element. Because Smooks applies XSLs on a per-fragment basis, this is no longer valid. Ensure that the style-sheet contains a template that matches against the context node instead (that is, the targeted fragment).