XSL: Whitespace Problem With HTML Output

[josh.asbury]

I am having some major issues with whitespace in my XSL stylesheets.
We recently upgraded our servlet-based application to JDK 1.4, and this
has forced the issue of my finally upgrading to Xalan-Java 2. The
earlier version of Xalan was much more forgiving in regards to
whitespace in our .xsl files, and now I am learning all about
<xsl:text> and <xsl:strip-space>.

I've come across something with HTML buttons, though, that I can't find
a way around.

Our XSL looks like this:
<input type="button" name="save" id="save"
onClick="thisValidate()"> <xsl:attribute
name="value">select</xsl:attribute>
</input>
<span style="width:5"/>
<input type="button" name="cancel" id="cancel" value="cancel">
<xsl:attribute name="onClick">window.navigate('<xsl:value-of
select="$parentPage"/>?catid=<xsl:value-of
select="$categoryId"/>')</xsl:attribute> </input>

Which outputs to HTML exactly like this:
<INPUT onClick="thisValidate()" id="save" name="save" type="button"
value="select"><span style="width:5"></span><input value="cancel"
id="cancel" name="cancel" type="button"
onClick="window.navigate('AddLocalServicesByCategory


?catid=204194')">
---------------------------------------------

I'm stumped. I've put <xsl:text/> in the window.navigate section.
I've put <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> in the stylesheet ( which, I
think, shouldn't impact this behavior ).

Any insight or ideas on this would be greatly appreciated. I've got a
ton of stylesheets behaving like this and need to have a solid
go-forward plan in order to make this upgrade a success.

Thanks!
Josh

 

[Joris Gillis]

Our XSL looks like this:
<input type="button" name="save" id="save"
onClick="thisValidate()"> <xsl:attribute
name="value">select</xsl:attribute>
</input>
<span style="width:5"/>
<input type="button" name="cancel" id="cancel" value="cancel">
<xsl:attribute name="onClick">window.navigate('<xsl:value-of
select="$parentPage"/>?catid=<xsl:value-of
select="$categoryId"/>')</xsl:attribute> </input>

Which outputs to HTML exactly like this:
<INPUT onClick="thisValidate()" id="save" name="save" type="button"
value="select"><span style="width:5"></span><input value="cancel"
id="cancel" name="cancel" type="button"
onClick="window.navigate('AddLocalServicesByCategory


?catid=204194')">
---------------------------------------------

I'm stumped. I've put <xsl:text/> in the window.navigate section.
I've put <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> in the stylesheet ( which, I
think, shouldn't impact this behavior ).

well, in fact it does not. The 'strip-space' element tells the XSLT processor to omit text nodes that contain nothing but whitespaces.

It seems the problem lies with the 'parentPage' variable; it contains linebreaks. You can trim the whitespaces with the 'normalize-space()':
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space($parentPage)"/>

Better would be to prohibit the linebreaks from being added at all when you create the variable.

regards,

 

[Josh]

That did it. Thanks!!