All XSLT stylesheets contain the following:

  • An XML declaration (optional)

  • An <xsl:stylesheet> element as the document's root element

  • Zero or more template rules

Consider the following bare-bones stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  version="1.0">
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <!-- the content for the output document contained here -->
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Note that the root template (defined by the match="/" attribute) will be called without regard for the contents of the XML document being processed. As such, this is the best place to put the top-level elements that we want to include in the output of each and every document being transformed with this stylesheet.