RE: [xsl] dynamic variable name/implementation question

["Michael Kay" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The exsl:node-set() function converts a result tree fragment to a node-set,
it doesn't parse source XML to create a document node.

The simplest (most standard) approach if you're invoking the transformation
from the command line is probably to put the XML in a file, pass the URI of
that file as a stylesheet parameter, and then load the document from within
the stylesheet using the document() function.

In Saxon you could pass the parameter as +parameters=doc.xml, the "+" sign
would cause the contents of the file doc.xml to be parsed, and the resulting
document node would be the value of the parameter. AFAIK Xalan has no
equivalent mechanism.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed S [mailto:lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 26 August 2005 15:11
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [xsl] dynamic variable name/implementation question
> 
> 
> 
>  
> > The usual solution is that instead of passing your stylesheet three
> > parameters x, y, and z, you should pass it an XML document 
> > 
> > <param>
> >   <x>1</x>
> >   <y>2</y>
> >   <z>3</z>
> > </param>
> > 
> > and then you can navigate this document at will using XPath.
> 
> I'm having a bit of trouble doing this.
> I'm running xalan as follows:
> >java org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN ext.xml -OUT 
> ext_out.xml -XSL ext.xsl -PARAM parameters 
> "<param-list><a>hello</a><b>goodbye</b></param-list>"
> 
> however, when I execute:
> <xsl:value-of select="exsl:node-set($parameters)"/>
> I would expect to get the values of all of the text nodes within, ie:
> hellogoodbye
> 
> however, $parameters is resolved as a string:
> &lt;param-list&gt;&lt;a&gt;hello&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;goodbye&lt;
> /b&gt;&lt;/param-list&gt;
> 
> Maybe I don't understand the purpose of node-set()...