Re: A more concise way to handle empty numeric element

Hi All

I have to process an XML file that contains a lot of numeric data. Many of the elements that have no value are empty instead of being zero and it may differ for each line, for example

<line id=1>
 <cost1>1000</cost1>
 <cost2>0</cost2> <!-- 0 here, but empty in next line -->
 <cost3></cost3>
</line>
<line id=2>
 <cost1>2000</cost1>
 <cost2></cost2>
 <cost3>3000</cost3>
</line>

I want to do:

<xsl:for-each select="line">
       <xsl:value-of select="format-number(cost1 + cost2 + cost3,'#,###')"/>
 </xsl:for-each>

However, the empty elements will cause "NaN" to be displayed

To fix it I can do:

<xsl:for-each select="line">
<xsl:variable name="cost1">
 <xsl:choose>
 <xsl:when test="(cost1 &gt;= 0)"><xsl:value-of select="cost1"/></xsl:when>
 <xsl:otherwise>0</xsl:otherwise>
 </xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="cost2">
 <xsl:choose>
 <xsl:when test="(cost2 &gt;= 0)"><xsl:value-of select="cost2"/></xsl:when>
 <xsl:otherwise>0</xsl:otherwise>
 </xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="cost3">
 <xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="(cost3 &gt;= 0)"><xsl:value-of select="cost3"/></xsl:when>
 <xsl:otherwise>0</xsl:otherwise>
 </xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
       <xsl:value-of select="format-number($cost1 + $cost2 + $cost3,'#,###')"/>
 </xsl:for-each>

However, it seems very long winded. Also the output is HTML, so it makes it hard to read the HTML with so much XML interwoven.

I realized I could write a template to return 0 for each empty element, but the call-template and parameter declaration will add further lines.

Is there a more succinct/elegant way to do it? (it's a shame "number(cost1)" doesn't return 0 for empty elements)

BTW: I'm using XSLT1.0 and can't use any extensions

<xsl:value-of select="(cost1/text()|$zero)[1] +
(cost2/text()|$zero)[1] + (cost3/text()|$zero)[1]"/>