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How to: Use Breakpoints with XSLT

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

You can set breakpoints in an XSLT style sheet or in the XML source document. If you set a breakpoint on a tag, when execution starts the breakpoint will move to the next statement that has source line information.

For more information, see Debugging Basics: Breakpoints.

Set a Breakpoint in a Style Sheet

Breakpoints can be set on start tags, end tags, and text nodes of an XSLT style sheet. Breakpoints can also be set on code in a script block.

To set a breakpoint in a style sheet

  1. Open a style sheet in the XML Editor.

  2. Position the cursor at the breakpoint location, right-click, point to Breakpoint, and click Insert Breakpoint.

  3. Click the browse the browse button (...) on the Input field of the document properties window.

  4. Locate the XML source document and click Open.

    This sets the source document file that is used for the XSLT transformation.

  5. Click the Debug XSL button on the XML Editor toolbar.

Set a Breakpoint in an XML Source Document

Breakpoints can be set on elements, attributes, namespace node, comments, processing instruction, and text nodes of an XML source document. You cannot set a breakpoint on the document node, or on a namespace node that is inherited from the parent element.

To set a breakpoint in an XML source document

  1. Open the XML document in the XML Editor.

  2. Position the cursor at the breakpoint location, right-click, point to Breakpoint, and click Insert Breakpoint.

  3. Click the browse the browse button (...) on the Stylesheet field of the document properties window.

  4. Locate the XML source document and click Open.

    This sets the source document file that is used for the XSLT transformation.

  5. Click the Debug XSL button on the XML Editor toolbar.

See Also

Walkthrough: Debug an XSLT Style Sheet