Re: [xsl] Only output element when parameter value is not equal to blank (or null)

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Florent Georges wrote:
> > You can make your stylesheet miles simpler and shorter by
> > using a different approach. Instead of tons of parameters,
> > use something extensible, like an XML structure
> >     
>
>   It simplifies the stylesheet, yes, but it is not always
> what you want.  You can want to provide a lot of parameters,
> settable from the command line interface of several
> processors, without requiring intalling other piece of
> software.  In this case, defining (even a lot of) parameters
> taking only string values is what you want.
>
>   Regards,
>
> --drkm
>   

One additional thought I left out is, to ease your development, to use 
tokenized parameters. But you are right, depending on your target 
system, and whether you can control how the xslt is called, you may and 
up with an unwieldy garden of parameters. We can't always have what we want.

But the way I look at it, seeing the OP's code, it looks awfully much 
like a hard maintainable piece of xslt. There are many ways to ease it, 
especially with the help of XSLT 2. And if you can't use XML or 
tokenized parameters, you can still keep all the logic around the huge 
amount of parameters together by using one additional variable (not 
parameter) that looks like my suggested param. The very least you will 
gain is: 20+ less xsl:if statements and much more readable/maintainable 
code.

Of course, modularizing your code, and how much time you want to spend 
on it, is all a matter of taste. Here's an upgraded example that 
illustrates my thoughts, leaving the OP's original parameters intact:

<xsl:param name="catalogName" />
<xsl:param name="productId" />

<xsl:variable name="key-settings">
  <setting name="MASTERCATALOGNAME" value="{$catalogName}" />
  <setting name="PRODUCTID" value="{$productId}" />
  ....
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:template match="/" >
.....

rest of the templates remain the same, see my earlier post on it, except 
for this one (see the slight change in the match):


<xsl:template match="setting[normalize-space(@value) != '']">
  <Key name="{@name}" type="string">
     <xsl:value-of select="@value" />
  </Key>
</xsl:template>


Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma