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Re: [xsl] Escaping <xsl:element> ouput

2008-08-07 02:29:06
True, even I felt that the explanation of my problem was a bit convoluted. I'll try and simply put across what it is that I'm trying to achieve here [though the scope of the whole problem is a bit too vast]:

Considering that I have an input XML like:

<person>
   <name>ABC</name>
   <age>24</age>
   <city>Bangalore</city>
</person>

This XML data needs to be converted into an HTML-like snippet which would then be used to construct a JSON object. I'm not quite sure whether you've worked with JSON before, but it is simply a name-value pair construct in JavaScript. Each value needs to be enclosed within double-quotes ("). So basically, whatever value has to go in, CANNOT contain any ", or all " need to be escaped (\").

So coming back to the XML above, the XSLT should generate a HTML-like snippet shown below:

<table width=\"100%\">
   <tr>
      <td width=\"150\">
         Name :
         <input type=\"text\" value=\"[name_node_value]\"/>
      </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
      <td width=\"150\">
         Age :
         <input type=\"text\" value=\"[age_node_value]\"/>
      </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
      <td width=\"150\">
         City :
         <input type=\"text\" value=\"[city_node_value]\"/>
      </td>
   </tr>
</table>

This text can then be set as a value in the JSON construct.

The alogrithm I tried to adopt was:
1. Process i/p XML and store transformed text in a variable.
2. Use the text within this variable and use the in-built XSLT function replace, to substitute all occurrences of " with \"

I hope this would help you understand my problem a bit better.

Thanks.



Michael Kay wrote:
You're talking about "tags". Tags don't exist in the data manipulated by
XSLT. XSLT only manipulates nodes in a tree. The way to solve your problem
is to use XSLT the way it was designed to be used: forget about CDATA and
tags, and think about element nodes.

Now take a step back, and tell us what you actually want to achieve - that
is, the input and output of your transformation, rather than your incorrect
attempts at coding the solution.

Michael Kay http://www.saxonica.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Anirvan Majumdar [mailto:anirban(_dot_)majumdar(_at_)taxilalab(_dot_)com] Sent: 07 August 2008 09:38
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: [xsl] Escaping <xsl:element> ouput

Hello,

I have a <xsl:variable> element which contains HTML snippet. Parts of this snippet are generated by transformations of other XSLT elements present. Next on, I'd like to take this <xsl:variable>'s value and apply some string manipulation templates on it. I realized that if I wanted to extract the value inclusive of tags then I needed to include the HTML code, and not the XSLT code, within <![CDATA]]> sections. Everything seemed to be going fine until I realized that all the content generated through the <xsl:element>s was missing. The tags are ignored and only the node value is captured.

How can I get around this problem? I checked and there is no way for output escaping in <xsl:element>, and neither is there any point of putting the code within <[CDATA[]]> since the transformations won't occure only.

I also thought of using <xsl:copy-of> to extract the variable value, but this isn't of much use to me, since the data extracted through copy-of cannot be used for any further processing as such. I can only display this value [something like <xsl:value-of>]

Here's an example of the kind of XSL I'm working on:
<xsl:variable name="someVar">
   <![CDATA[
   <span id="1">
      <input type="text" value="A" name="txtVal"/>
      ]]>
      <xsl:element name="input">
         <xsl:attribute name="type">hidden<xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name="value">[some value computed before]</xsl:attribute>
      </xsl:elelement>
   <![CDATA[
   </span>
   ]]>
</xsl:variable>

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