Re: [xsl] Test for mixed content

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

As Mike and Jirka have hinted, there's a subtle but important 
distinction between "this element contains mixed content" and "some 
element of this element's type contains mixed content". The former is 
easy to test for, as David shows. The latter is a bit trickier, 
especially given how the scope for "some" and "type" might vary -- 
some element with the same name in the document, some element 
validating against a schema, etc.

Sometimes the latter can safely be treated as the former, and 
sometimes not. Sometimes you can't check the schema, but you can 
check all the elements of a given element's type in a document, and 
get a narrower margin of error (though not none) that way.

This is where a 2.0 feature that was discussed recently can be 
helpful. XSLT 2.0 can perform whitespace stripping of "insignificant" 
whitespace. Whitespace occurring in mixed content isn't insignificant 
by definition. Of course, this requires you to have an XSD or DTD.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 07:12 AM 9/12/2007, David wrote:
> > What is the best way to test if an element contains mixed content.
>
> if mixed content means having element nodes and text nodes then
>
> test="text() and *"


======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================