HTML in XSL User-Defined Functions

[Guest]

I'd like to output an HTML fragment from an XSL UDF, but the HTML tags
aren't being output (just non-html values show up in the output). As a
noob, I'm probably missing some fundamental piece of info.

For instance, the following yields simply "hello" in my HTML output:

<xsl:function name="jj:test">
<td>hello</td>
</xsl:function>

Also, it would be a bonus if someone would guide me to some good, free,
online XSLT (2) documentation.

Thanks,
Jamie

 

[Martin Honnen]

Also, it would be a bonus if someone would guide me to some good, free,
online XSLT (2) documentation.

It depends on what you are looking for in terms of depth but I think the
Saxon documentation Michael Kay provides here
<http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/xsl-elements/intro.html>
<http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/functions/intro.html>
<http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/expressions/intro.html>
is rather helpful for a start.

 

[Martin Honnen]

I'd like to output an HTML fragment from an XSL UDF, but the HTML tags
aren't being output (just non-html values show up in the output). As a
noob, I'm probably missing some fundamental piece of info.

For instance, the following yields simply "hello" in my HTML output:

<xsl:function name="jj:test">
<td>hello</td>
</xsl:function>

You have not shown us how you call that function, if you do e.g.
<xsl:copy-of select="jj:test()" />
then I am sure the td element will be there in the result tree.
If you use e.g.
<xsl:value-of select="jj:test()" />
then you get what you ask for, the string value of that td element node
the function returns.

 

[Martin Honnen]

You have not shown us how you call that function, if you do e.g.
<xsl:copy-of select="jj:test()" />
then I am sure the td element will be there in the result tree.

I think an even better way is to use e.g.
<xsl:sequence select="jj:test()" />
as that avoids copying the node.

 

[Joe Kesselman]

Also, it would be a bonus if someone would guide me to some good, free,

online XSLT (2) documentation.

As others have said, it depends on what you want. There are a fair
number of articles/tutorials on XML-related topics on DeveloperWorks
http://www.ibm.com/xml

The XSLT FAQ website is _VERY_ useful
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/index.html
and if you're serious about this you may want to subscribe to the
mailing list it draws from, which is a bit more focused than this newsgroup:
http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list/

And of course the official specs are available from the W3C's website
http://www.w3.org
though reading those takes a certain amount of experience.


Mike Kay's XSLT book is _not_ free, but is a pretty darned good
human-readable reference for XSLT. I used it frequently while I was
coming up to speed.

 

[Peter Flynn]

I'd like to output an HTML fragment from an XSL UDF, but the HTML tags
aren't being output (just non-html values show up in the output). As a
noob, I'm probably missing some fundamental piece of info.

Yep. http://xml.silmaril.ie/authors/html/

///Peter