Member Avatar for metinh

Hello everyone. I am trying to implement CDATA wrapping of values conditionally in XSLT.
My requirements are:
- If the value contains <, >, &, ", ' then it must be wrapped in CDATA in the transformed output.
- if the value does not contain any of the above characters, it will not be wrapped in CDATA
- This logic will need to be implemented on many fields

Does anyone have any strategies on how to do this?

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  • 3 Replies
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by fpmurphy
Member Avatar for fpmurphy

What you want to do is not supported by XSL because including these characters in your XML document renders the XML document invalid.

Member Avatar for xml_looser

for testing

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<root>
				<item><![CDATA[<]]></item>
				<item><![CDATA[>]]></item>
				<item><![CDATA[&]]></item>
				<item><![CDATA["]]></item>
				<item><![CDATA[']]></item>
				<item>Mc Donold's
				</item>
				<item>Siegfried &amp; Roy
				</item>
				<item>a &gt;b
				</item>
				<item>a &lt;b
				</item>
</root>

xsl

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
	<xsl:apply-templates select="root"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="root">
	<root>
		<xsl:apply-templates select="item"/>
	</root>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="item">
	<item>
	<xsl:variable name="pos">'</xsl:variable>
	<xsl:choose>
	<xsl:when test="contains(.,'&lt;')">
		<xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;![CDATA[',.,']]&gt;')"/>
	</xsl:when>
	<xsl:when test="contains(.,'&gt;')">
		<xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;![CDATA[',.,']]&gt;')"/>
	</xsl:when>
	<xsl:when test="contains(.,'&amp;')">
		<xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;![CDATA[',.,']]&gt;')"/>
	</xsl:when>
	<xsl:when test="contains(.,'&quot;')">
		<xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;![CDATA[',.,']]&gt;')"/>
	</xsl:when>
	<xsl:when test="contains(.,$pos)">
		<xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;![CDATA[',.,']]&gt;')"/>
	</xsl:when>
	<xsl:otherwise>
		<xsl:value-of select="."/>
	</xsl:otherwise>
	</xsl:choose>
	</item>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

result

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[&lt;]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[&gt;]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[&amp;]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA["]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[']]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[Mc Donold's
				]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[Siegfried &amp; Roy
				]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[a &gt;b
				]]&gt;</item>
   <item>&lt;![CDATA[a &lt;b
				]]&gt;</item>
</root>

Helmut Hagemann

Member Avatar for fpmurphy

What you want to do is not supported by XSL because including these characters in your XML document renders the XML document invalid.

Sorry that I was not clearer. I should have added "It is possble however to include these characters if you guard them with <![CDATA[ ... ]]. "

As I understand it, the OP wants to know how to detect these characters in a document using XSL and, if found, then add "<![CDATA[ ... ]]" guards. A totally different issue than you show in your example.

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