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

[Anirvan Majumdar <anirban.majumdar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.majumdar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> > Sent: 07 August 2008 09:38
> > To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > 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>