xhtml - Can an XSLT insert the current date?

Question

A program we use in my office exports reports by translating a XML file it exports with an XSLT file into XHTML. I'm rewriting the XSLT to change the formatting and to add more information from the source XML File.

I'd like to include the date the file was created in the final report. But the current date/time is not included in the original XML file, nor do I have any control on how the XML file is created. There doesn't seem to be any date functions building into XSLT that will return the current date.

Does anyone have any idea how I might be able to include the current date during my XSLT transformation?

Answer 1

XSLT 2

Date functions are available natively, such as:

<xsl:value-of  select="current-dateTime()"/>

There is also current-date() and current-time().

XSLT 1

Use the EXSLT date and times extension package.

1. Download the date and times package from GitHub.
2. Extract date.xsl to the location of your XSL files.
3. Set the stylesheet header.
4. Import date.xsl.

For example:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
    xmlns:date="http://exslt.org/dates-and-times" 
    extension-element-prefixes="date"
    ...>

    <xsl:import href="date.xsl" />

    <xsl:template match="//root">
       <xsl:value-of select="date:date-time()"/>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>