Re: [xsl] question on random numbers for browser XSLT

Subject: Re: [xsl] question on random numbers for browser XSLT
From: Martin Honnen <Martin.Honnen@xxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:28:16 +0200
Hermann Stamm-Wilbrandt wrote:

Scott Trenda has problems in getting his email accepted by xsl-list and
asked me to forward his response to Ben's post.

[snip]


The cache-append idea was my first thought, but I couldn't think of a good
way to pull together how to have each request be unique. It's possible
using node-set(), though:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="
http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"; xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common";
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="exsl
msxsl">
  <xsl:output method="html" encoding="UTF-8" />

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
      <body>
        <div>rand(6): <xsl:call-template name="rand" /></div>
        <div>rand(6): <xsl:call-template name="rand" /></div>
        <div>rand(6): <xsl:call-template name="rand" /></div>
        <div>rand(6): <xsl:call-template name="rand" /></div>
        <div>rand(6): <xsl:call-template name="rand" /></div>
        <div>rand(6): <xsl:call-template name="rand" /></div>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="rand">
    <xsl:param name="scale" select="6" />
    <xsl:variable name="seed" />
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="function-available('exsl:node-set')">
        <xsl:value-of select="document(concat('/cgi-bin/rand.pl?', $scale,
'&amp;x=', generate-id(exsl:node-set($seed))))" />
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:when test="function-available('msxsl:node-set')">
        <xsl:value-of select="document(concat('/cgi-bin/rand.pl?', $scale,
'&amp;x=', generate-id(msxsl:node-set($seed))))" />
      </xsl:when>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>


That'll give you six random values, assuming the Perl script recognizes the &x=Idxxxxx as cache-append garbage.

Interesting approach however when I test it with browsers then Firefox (3.0), Opera (9.63) and Safari (3.2) all seem to generate the same id each time that template is called:
http://home.arcor.de/martin.honnen/xslt/test2009072402.xml
(stylesheet: http://home.arcor.de/martin.honnen/xslt/test2009072402Xsl.xml)


Only IE (tested with IE 8) generates different ids.

--

	Martin Honnen
	http://msmvps.com/blogs/martin_honnen/

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