Re: Search and Replace in XSLT

Ciaran,

>let's say I have:
>
><img src="x.bmp" alt="[tag]"/>
>
>and I want to replace '[' with '<' to get the output
>
><img src="x.bmp">
><tag/>
>
>using Michaels' technique I get the usual entity problem in XML
>i.e. the output becomes:
>
><img src="x.bmp">
>&lt;tag/&lt;
>
>which is no good to me as I need the proper tag.

You're thinking about generating XML in the wrong way if you want to use
XSLT to do it.  Rather than thinking "I am generating a string, with a '<',
then the string 'tag', then a '/', then a '>', to give an empty element
called 'tag'", you should be thinking "I am generating an empty element
called 'tag'".  [This goes for other things as well as just generating
elements: XSLT processes and produces a *structure*, not a sequence of
characters.]

To generate an element with a variable name (presumably the @alt attribute
could hold anything), you can use the xsl:element element:

<xsl:element name="...">
  ...
</xsl:element>

[For an empty element, <xsl:element name="..." />]

The value of the @name attribute on xsl:element should be an XPath that
selects something with a string value that gives you the name.  Let's say
you're matching on the 'img' element:

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

Within this template, the current node is the 'img' element, so you can get
the value of the @alt attribute through the XPath '@alt':

<xsl:template match="img">
  ...
  <xsl:element name="@alt" />
</xsl:template>

In your case, this would actually give you an element called '[tag]', which
isn't a valid name for an element, so you need to do a bit of
string-munging to get rid of the '[' and ']' first:

<xsl:template match="img">
  ...
  <xsl:element name="string-after(string-before(@alt, ']'), '[')" />
</xsl:template>

I hope that this helps,

Jeni

Dr Jeni Tennison
Epistemics Ltd, Strelley Hall, Nottingham, NG8 6PE
Telephone 0115 9061301 ? Fax 0115 9061304 ? Email
jeni.tennison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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