XSLT beginner's question

[Martin (33)]

I have 5 days of experince with XSLT and I am sure my problem is pretty much as basic as they come but I cannot work it out, so I hope someone will take pity on me - please!

I have inherited an XML file format which has one header node and several child nodes :

<wi workitemid= "99999" .... etc .... />
<widata dataname="AMOUNT" datadisplay="Amount" datavalue="123.45"/> <widata dataname="ADDRESS1" datadisplay="Address" datavalue="Line 1" > <widata .... etc ....

and am processing them using XSLT to produce an HTML table, by for example :

<xsl:apply-templates select="widata[@dataname = 'AGENTNAME']" mode="left_left"/>

The template puts the value of datadisplay into one table cell, and the value of datavalue into the next cell.

So far, so good. However, how would I get the values from two widata nodes and concatenate them so that I can put them into one cell? I know about the concat function but I am having problems getting hold of the values from the nodes and storing them so that I can then use that function.

I hope I have included enough info to be helpful.

Thank-you.

Martin

 

[vin sharma]

Use variables to hold the values and then concat the variables.

<td>

<xsl:variable name="state">
<xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'ADDRESS3']/@datavalue" /> <!-- or some other node selection --> </xsl:variable>

<xsl:variable name="zip">
<xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'ADDRESS4']/@datavalue" /> <!-- or some other node selection --> </xsl:variable>

....

<xsl:value-of select="concat($state, ' ', $zip)" />

....

</td>

HTH,
-vin

 

[Andy Dingley]

However, how would I get the values from two widata
nodes and concatenate them so that I can put them into one cell?

I am having problems getting hold
of the values from the nodes and storing them so that I can then use that function.

So don't store them. Write two XPath expressions, get them working and tested separately, then cut-and-paste each one into the arguments to concat

 

[Martin (33)]

Thank you both for your responses. They both make sense to me but I'm still doing something not quite right because I can't get either of them to transform.

Firstly my XPath expressions are fine now, thanks for the pointers. I've put them in a couple of xsl:comments and the values are what I'm after. However,

Vin - if I use your suggestion, I get the error

A reference to variable or parameter 'x' cannot be resolved. The variable or parameter may not be defined, or it may not be in scope.

This has completely puzzled me as the only time at the moment I reference the variable is when I try to allocate a value to it; I haven't got to the point of trying to then use that value later on, so how can it possibly be that when I create the variable and at the same time allocate a value to it the variable is out of scope ?!

Andy - I have tried pasting my XPath expressions as you suggested :

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
xsl:value-of select='widata[@dataname =
&quot;AGENTID&quot;]/@datavalue' ,
' ' ,
xsl:value-of select='widata[@dataname =
&quot;AGENTNAME&quot;]/@datavalue')"
/>
</xsl:call-template>

I get the error

Keyword xsl:call-template may not contain PCDATA nodes.

Please could you help me understand these issues.

Thanks,

Martin

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

% <xsl:call-template name="left_left">
% <xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
% xsl:value-of select='widata[@dataname =
% &quot;AGENTID&quot;]/@datavalue' ,
% ' ' ,
% xsl:value-of select='widata[@dataname =
% &quot;AGENTNAME&quot;]/@datavalue')"
% />

You're trying to put xslt elements inside an xpath expression. Try

% <xsl:call-template name="left_left">
% <xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname ='AGENTID']/@datavalue,
% ' ' ,
widata[@dataname = 'AGENTNAME']/@datavalue)"
% />
% </xsl:call-template>

The suggestion to concatenate two xsl:value-of was simply to do that:

<xsl:template name="left_left">
<!-- whatever -->
<xsl:value-of select ="widata[@dataname ='AGENTID']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:value-of select ="widata[@dataname = 'AGENTNAME']/@datavalue"/> <!-- whatever else --> </xsl:template>

 

[Martin (33)]

You're trying to put xslt elements inside an xpath expression. Try

% <xsl:call-template name="left_left">
% <xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname ='AGENTID']/@datavalue,
% ' ' ,
widata[@dataname = 'AGENTNAME']/@datavalue)"
% />
% </xsl:call-template>

Thank you, Patrick. Yes, I was trying to make it more complicated than was necessary. I have now got it working and I appreciate the help that you and everyone else gave me.

I would still like to understand the problem I had earlier when trying to use a variable. I have stripped down my stlyesheet to the following minimum skeleton :

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">

<xslutput method="html"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<xsl:variable name="agentname" select="0"/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I still get the error : "A reference to variable or parameter 'agentname' cannot be resolved. The variable or parameter may not be defined, or it may not be in scope".

Can anyone enlighten me as to what I am doing wrong here, please?

Martin

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

% to use a variable. I have stripped down my stlyesheet to the % following minimum skeleton :
%
% <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
% xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" % xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"> % % <xslutput method="html"/> % <xsl:template match="/"> % <html> % <body> % <xsl:variable name="agentname" select="0"/> % </body> % </html> % </xsl:template> % </xsl:stylesheet>

% I still get the error : "A reference to variable or parameter % 'agentname' cannot be resolved. The variable or parameter may not be % defined, or it may not be in scope".

Are you sure this is the stylesheet giving that error? There is no reference to agentname here. Is there another stylesheet with $agentname in it somewhere?

 

[vin sharma]

I would still like to understand the problem I had earlier when trying to use a variable. I have stripped down my stlyesheet to the following minimum skeleton :

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">

<xslutput method="html"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<xsl:variable name="agentname" select="0"/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I still get the error : "A reference to variable or parameter 'agentname' cannot be resolved. The variable or parameter may not be defined, or it may not be in scope".

Can anyone enlighten me as to what I am doing wrong here, please?

Are you using *-PARAM agentname* as a command-line option?

 

[Martin (33)]

Are you using *-PARAM agentname* as a command-line option?

No, I am using XSLDebugger (http://www.vbxml.com/xsldebugger/)to do my development, and it is this that is giving me the error message.

Should my previously posted stylesheet work OK? If so, then maybe this product is buggy?? Is there another freeware product or alternative method I can use instead?

Can I throw in another issue that I've come up against? Now that my concat statement is working I want to add line breaks between my values and so I am trying to get <BR> tags in my output HTML.

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname = 'ADDRESS1']/@datavalue, '<' 'BR',
'>',
widata[@dataname = 'ADDRESS2']/@datavalue, '<' 'BR',
'>',
etc.

However, this gets transformed into
&lt;BR&gt;
not
<BR>
and so my HTML doesn't display as I want it.

How can I get the angle brackets to output please?

Martin

 

[Bob Foster]

You can't output tags as data. Output them as HTML tags.

Bob Foster

vin sharma wrote:
Are you using *-PARAM agentname* as a command-line option?

No, I am using XSLDebugger (http://www.vbxml.com/xsldebugger/)to do my development, and it is this that is giving me the error message.

Should my previously posted stylesheet work OK? If so, then maybe this product is buggy?? Is there another freeware product or alternative method I can use instead?

Can I throw in another issue that I've come up against? Now that my concat statement is working I want to add line breaks between my values and so I am trying to get <BR> tags in my output HTML.

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname = 'ADDRESS1']/@datavalue, '<' 'BR',
'>',
widata[@dataname = 'ADDRESS2']/@datavalue, '<' 'BR',
'>',
etc.

However, this gets transformed into
&lt;BR&gt;
not
<BR>
and so my HTML doesn't display as I want it.

How can I get the angle brackets to output please?

Martin[/QUOTE]

 

[Martin (33)]

You can't output tags as data. Output them as HTML tags.

Bob Foster

Ah, but how?? I really am very new to this stuff and it is very different from the VB with which I mainly make my living. I'm trying to learn from books and the helpful people on here but at the moment all I can find are the ways I cannot do this! I have tried each of the following :

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS2']/@datavalue, '<', 'BR', '>', widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS3']/@datavalue, <BR>, widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS4']/@datavalue, '<BR>',

with the following results :
the first one transforms into &gt; and &lt; and displays as <BR> as I've already said; the second and third ones say that "the character '<' cannot be used in an attribute value" which I understand and which was why I tried using the hex values.

It was suggested to me that a captial A with a circumflex (hex C2) might act as an escape character but it only seems to work with a pound-sterling sign £, not generally.

So, I am still in the dark as to how to output these tags as I require. Please can anyone offer further help.

Thanks,

Martin

 

[Malcolm Dew-Jones]

Martin wrote:

> You can't output tags as data. Output them as HTML tags.
>
> Bob Foster
>

Ah, but how?? I really am very new to this stuff and it is very different from the VB with which I mainly make my living. I'm trying to learn from books and the helpful people on here but at the moment all I can find are the ways I cannot do this! I have tried each of the following :

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS2']/@datavalue, '<', 'BR', '>', widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS3']/@datavalue, <BR>, widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS4']/@datavalue, '<BR>',

with the following results :
the first one transforms into &gt; and &lt; and displays as <BR> as I've already said; the second and third ones say that "the character '<' cannot be used in an attribute value" which I understand and which was why I tried using the hex values.

Butting in, if I missed something, sorry, but...

To get the < into the attribute, the attribute actually has to contain the literal string &lt; (i.e. four characters). To get that sequence of characters into the outer "layer" of markup you have to encode those four characters (which actually means just the & cause it's the thing that's special).

So I would try &amp;lt;

(or even &amp;amp;lt; , though that might be one level of encoding too many)

 

[Dean Tiegs]

You can't output tags as data. Output them as HTML tags.

Bob Foster

Ah, but how?? I really am very new to this stuff and it is very different from the VB with which I mainly make my living. I'm trying to learn from books and the helpful people on here but at the moment all I can find are the ways I cannot do this! I have tried each of the following :

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data" select="concat(
widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS2']/@datavalue, '<', 'BR', '>', widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS3']/@datavalue, <BR>, widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS4']/@datavalue, '<BR>',

Try this:

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data">
<xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS2']/@datavalue"/> <br/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS3']/@datavalue"/> <br/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS4']/@datavalue"/> <br/> </xsl:with-param> </xsl:call-template>

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

% % > You can't output tags as data. Output them as HTML tags. % > % > Bob Foster % > % % Ah, but how??

Go back to the other suggestion for generating the parameter:

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data">
<xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS1']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS2']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS3']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS4']/@datavalue"/> </xsl:with-param> </xsl:call-template>

Now insert the breaks between them. I think you have to use xsl:element to do this, since <br> is not well-formed. I expect if you're using xhtml you could write <br/> directly, but I'm not an html maven.

<xsl:call-template name="left_left">
<xsl:with-param name="data">
<xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS1']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:element name="br"/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS2']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:element name="br"/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS3']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:element name="br"/> <xsl:value-of select="widata[@dataname = 'SEC_ADDRESS4']/@datavalue"/> <xsl:element name="br"/> </xsl:with-param> </xsl:call-template>

Now, in template left_left, you refer to this using copy-of, rather than value-of

<xsl:copy-of select="$data"/>

copy-of will insert a node tree, while value-of inserts the concatenated text nodes (i.e., throwing away the <br> nodes).