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<h1>saxon:serialize()</h1>
<p><b>saxon:serialize($node as node(), $format as xs:string)</b></p>
<p><b>saxon:serialize($node as node(), $format as element(xsl:output))</b></p>
<p>This function takes two arguments: the first is a node (generally a document or element node)
to be serialized. The second argument defines the serialization properties. The second argument takes
several possible forms:</p>
<ul>
<li content="para">
<p>When called within an XSLT stylesheet, the second argument may be the name of an
<code>xsl:output</code> element in the stylesheet, written as a string literal (it must be a literal,
or at any rate, an expression that is evaluated at compile time).</p>
</li>
<li content="para">
<p>In non-XSLT environments, the second argument
may be the name of the output method (xml, html, xhtml, text), written as a string literal.
In this case the other serialization parameters are defaulted.</p>
</li>
<li content="para">
<p>In all environments, the second argument may be an <code>xsl:output</code> element
conforming to the rules defined in the XSLT specification. This element may be constructed
dynamically, and may therefore be used to decide all the serialization properties dynamically.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>For example, the function may be used as follows in XQuery:</p>
<div class="codeblock"
style="border: solid thin; background-color: #B1CCC7; padding: 2px">
<pre>
<code>
declare namespace saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/";
declare namespace xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
<out>{
let $x := <a><b/><c>content</c><?pi?><!--comment--></a>
return saxon:serialize($x, <xsl:output method="xml"
omit-xml-declaration="yes"
indent="yes"
saxon:indent-spaces="1"/>)
}</out>
</code>
</pre>
</div>
<p>The function serializes the specified document, or the subtree rooted at the specified element, according
to the parameters specified, and returns the serialized document as a string.</p>
<p>This function is useful where the stylesheet or query wants to manipulate the serialized output,
for example by embedding it as CDATA inside another XML document, or prefixing it with a DOCTYPE
declaration, or inserting it into a non-XML output file.</p>
<p>Note that because the output is a string, the encoding parameter has no effect on the actual encoding,
though it does affect what is written to the XML declaration.</p>
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