Re: [xsl] specifying a target for a hyperlink

[Jeni Tennison <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rach,

> hopefully someone will be able to help me solve this problem. I have
> hyperlinks in my xml document that I am applying xsl to and then
> opening them in a html page. This is all working find, but I want
> the new page (as a result of clicking the hyperlink to open in a new
> page. I can't get the target element of the hyperlink working
> properly. Currently I have the target as an attribute of the
> hyper;ink. I don't know if this is correct! maybe it would be easier
> if I contained the information in a separate tag? I have included
> snippets of the xml and xsl below. the information for calling the
> files is all in an asp file.

For a start, you should be using XSLT rather than the strange dialect
that's used in old versions of MSXML.  Have a look at the MSXML FAQ at
http://www.netcrucible.com/xslt/msxml-faq.htm for a description.

Secondly, you shouldn't be using the xmlns attribute to do anything
aside from setting the default namespace of an element.  This:

> <url xmlns="_blank"> http://www.vbxml.com/downloads/#software</url>

Fixes the default namespace to the namespace URI '_blank' (which I
think it not a legal namespace URI).  Instead, use a different name,
like 'target' for the attribute:

  <url target="_blank">http://www.vbxml.com/downloads/#software</url>

Finally, in order to aim an HTML link at another target, you need to
have a 'target' attribute on the HTML 'a' element.  If you always want
it to open in another window, you could use:

  <A HREF="{url}" TARGET="_blank"><xsl:value-of select="url" /></A>

If you want to use the 'target' attribute on the 'url' element to
determine the location, then you could use an attribute value template
to fix it:

  <A HREF="{url}" TARGET="{url/@target}">
     <xsl:value-of select="url" />
  </A>

Note that this is just a shortened syntax from the spelt-out version,
which uses xsl:attribute:

  <A>
     <xsl:attribute name="HREF">
        <xsl:value-of select="url" />
     </xsl:attribute>
     <xsl:attribute name="TARGET">
        <xsl:value-of select="url/@target" />
     </xsl:attribute>
     <xsl:value-of select="url" />
  </A>

I hope that helps,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/



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