How to migrate away from XSLT

Find the files

List every sitemap, feed and XML page your site serves. Run each address through the checker; it shows the stylesheet line and says which are XSLT. Search your code for XSLTProcessor too: that is the script side of the same removal.

1. Remove the line

If nobody needs a styled view, delete the xml-stylesheet line. The file becomes plain XML. Search engines and feed readers behave as before. This is the right answer for most feeds.

2. Swap in CSS

For a readable page without scripts, replace the line with a CSS one. Use the sitemap CSS generator or the feed CSS generator. CSS keeps working in browsers after the change.

3. Render at build time

If you need the table, the sort or the exact layout, run the transform when you build and publish the result as HTML. With the libxslt command line:

xsltproc -o sitemap.html sitemap.xsl sitemap.xml

Or with Node, using the xslt-processor package (pure JavaScript; its licence is LGPL-3.0, so check that it suits your project):

// render.mjs  ->  node render.mjs sitemap.xml sitemap.xsl > sitemap.html
import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs';
import { Xslt, XmlParser } from 'xslt-processor';

const [xmlFile, xslFile] = process.argv.slice(2);
const parser = new XmlParser();
const html = await new Xslt().xsltProcess(
  parser.xmlParse(readFileSync(xmlFile, 'utf8')),
  parser.xmlParse(readFileSync(xslFile, 'utf8')),
);
process.stdout.write(html);

Link the HTML file from your site and keep serving the XML for crawlers and readers, without the stylesheet line. To try a stylesheet first, paste it into the converter.

4. Add the polyfill

If you cannot touch the build, add the script line to the XML file or the script tag to the page. It costs about 1.4 MB per view; read the self-hosting guide first.

Many files at once

A site with dozens of feeds or sitemaps needs the same fix applied in a loop. The Batch Pack ($9, one time) generates a Node script that renders every XML file in a folder with its stylesheet, and checks up to 200 addresses at once.

Generate a Node migration script