strip-space elements="*" : strip space « XSLT stylesheet « XML Tutorial

1. XML Tutorial
2. XSLT stylesheet
3. strip space

File: Data.xml
<colors>

  <color>red</color>

  <color>yellow</color>

  <color>blue</color>

  <!-- 
    Next color element has whitespace content. 
  -->
  <color></color>

</colors>

File: Transform.xslt

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

  <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />

  <xsl:strip-space elements="*" />
  <xsl:preserve-space elements="codeListing sampleOutput" />

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

</xsl:stylesheet>

Output:

<colors><color>red</color><color>yellow</color><color>blue</color><!-- 
    Next color element has whitespace content. 
  --><color/></colors>