I'm new to XSLT and I'm trying to write some XSLT that will flatten any given XML such that a new line occurs whenever the nesting level changes. My input can be any XML document, with any number of nested levels so the structure isn't known to the XSLT. Due to the tools available to me, my solution has to use XSLT version 1.0. For example. <?xml version="1.0"?> <ROWSET> <ROW> <CUSTOMER_ID>0</CUSTOMER_ID> <NAME>Default Company</NAME> <BONUSES> <BONUSES_ROW> <BONUS_ID>21</BONUS_ID> <DESCRIPTION>Performance Bonus</DESCRIPTION> </BONUSES_ROW> <BONUSES_ROW> <BONUS_ID>26</BONUS_ID> <DESCRIPTION>Special Bonus</DESCRIPTION> </BONUSES_ROW> </BONUSES> </ROW> <ROW> <CUSTOMER_ID>1</CUSTOMER_ID> <NAME>Dealer 1</NAME> <BONUSES> <BONUSES_ROW> <BONUS_ID>27</BONUS_ID> <DESCRIPTION>June Bonus</DESCRIPTION> <BONUS_VALUES> <BONUS_VALUES_ROW> <VALUE>10</VALUE> <PERCENT>N</PERCENT> </BONUS_VALUES_ROW> <BONUS_VALUES_ROW> <VALUE>11</VALUE> <PERCENT>Y</PERCENT> </BONUS_VALUES_ROW> </BONUS_VALUES> </BONUSES_ROW> </BONUSES> </ROW> <ROWSET> needs to becomes.... 0, Default Company 21, Performance Bonus 26, Special Bonus 1, Dealer 1 27, June Bonus 10, N 11, Y The XSLT I've written so far is... <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="text" encoding="iso-8859-1"/> <xsl:strip-space elements="*" /> <xsl:template match="/*/child::*"> <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="*"> <xsl:value-of select="text()" /> <xsl:if test="position()!= last()"><xsl:text>,</xsl:text></xsl:if> <xsl:if test="position()= last()"><xsl:text>&#xD;</xsl:text></xsl:if> <xsl:apply-templates select="./child::*"/> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> but my output just isn't correct, with gaps and unnecessary data. 0,Default Company, ,21,Performance Bonus 26,Special Bonus 1,Dealer 1, 27,June Bonus, ,10,N 11,Y It seems there needs to be a check as whether or not a node can contain text, but I'm stuck and could do with an XSLT expert's help.