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Re: xsl:if to find the existence of an element

• To: Phil Fuhlman <pfuhlman@D...>
• Subject: Re: xsl:if to find the existence of an element
• From: Francis Norton <francis@r...>
• Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 18:26:41 +0100
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• References: <B83445050D0D6B4BAD2801F1585F9D6E7D8229@x...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020311

On the other hand, it may be a good example of where XSLT is the right 
tool. Here's one way of doing it -

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
version="1.0">
    <!-- -->
    <!-- do a "pull" type transform  -->
    <xsl:template match="SendTaxRequest">
        <SendTaxRequest>
            <element name="TransactionIdentifier" type="ebcdicString" 
totalDigits="{string-length(TransactionNumber)}" 
value="{TransactionNumber}"/>
            <element name="BusinessDayDate" type="date" 
totalDigits="{string-length(BusinessDayDate)}" value="{BusinessDayDate}"/>
            <element name="TaxOutOfCountryFlag" type="ebcdicString" 
totalDigits="1">
                <xsl:attribute name="value">
                    <xsl:choose>
                        <xsl:when test="TaxOutOfCountryFlag">Y</xsl:when>
                        <xsl:otherwise>N</xsl:otherwise>
                    </xsl:choose>
                </xsl:attribute>
            </element>
        </SendTaxRequest>
    </xsl:template>
    <!-- -->
</xsl:stylesheet>

you'll notice how the structure of the transform reflects the desired 
output - in this coding style XSLT can resemble a simple mail-merge.

I shall leave it to cleverer people than me to demonstrate how much more 
appropriate the other tools are ;)

But if you decide to go with XSLT, try xsl-list for support - it really 
is a surprisingly good list.

Francis.

Phil Fuhlman wrote:

>With all due respect, and since you asked, IMHO, this may be a good
>example of where XSL is *maybe* the wrong tool and you may want to
>consider using a 'real programming language', ie. anything from
>VBScript, JavaScript, Perl, Python on up to C/C++, Fortran or Cobol.
>
>"...when the only tool you have is a hammer, all of your problems start
>to look like nails..."
>
>But then again, I get this feeling anytime I hear/read "if" and "XML
>transform" <lol>
>
></pff>
>
>

• References:
  • RE: xsl:if to find the existence of an element
    • From: "Phil Fuhlman" <pfuhlman@D...>

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