Convert 'embedded' XML doc into CDATA output in XSLT (1.0)

Question

Given an input XML document like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<title> This contains an 'embedded' HTML document </title>
<document>
<html>
<head><title>HTML DOC</title></head>
<body>
Hello World
</body>
</html>
</document>
</root>

How I can extract that 'inner' HTML document; render it as CDATA and include in my output document ?

So the output document will be an HTML document; which contains a text-box showing the elements as text (so it will be displaying the 'source-view' of the inner document).

I have tried this:

<xsl:template match="document">
<xsl:value-of select="*"/>
</xsl:template>

But this only renders the Text Nodes.

I have tried this:

<xsl:template match="document">
<![CDATA[
<xsl:value-of select="*"/>
]]>
</xsl:template>

But this escapes the actual XSLT and I get:

&lt;xsl:value-of select="*"/&gt;

I have tried this:

<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" cdata-section-elements="document"/>
[...]
<xsl:template match="document">
<document>
<xsl:value-of select="*"/>
</document>
</xsl:template>

This does insert a CDATA section, but the output still contains just text (stripped elements):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>My doc</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <h1>Title: This contains an 'embedded' HTML document </h1>
      <document><![CDATA[
                                                HTML DOC

                                                                Hello World

                                ]]></document>
   </body>
</html>

Can you show your expected output please?

Sean B. Durkin
– Sean B. Durkin

2012-09-12 14:04:32 +00:00
Commented Sep 12, 2012 at 14:04 — Sean B. Durkin
– Sean B. Durkin, Commented Sep 12, 2012 at 14:04

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-13 17:40:04Z

11

There are two confusions you need to clear up here.

First, you probably want xsl:copy-of rather than xsl:value-of. The latter returns the string value of an element, the former returns a copy of the element.

Second, the cdata-section-elements attribute on xsl:output affects the serialization of text nodes, but not of elements and attributes. One way to get what you want would be to serialize the HTML yourself, along the lines of the following (not tested):

<xsl:template match="document/descendant::*">
  <xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;', name())"/>
  <!--* attributes are left as an exercise for the reader ... *-->
  <xsl:text>&gt;</xsl:text>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
  <xsl:value-of select="concat('&lt;/', name(), '>')"/>
</xsl:template>

But the quicker way would be something like the following solution (squeamish readers, stop reading now), pointed out to me by my friend Tommie Usdin. Drop the cdata-section-elements attribute from xsl:output and replace your template for the document element with:

<xsl:template match="document">
  <document>
    <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;![CDATA[</xsl:text>
    <xsl:copy-of select="./html"/>
    <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">]]&gt;</xsl:text>
  </document>
</xsl:template>

edited Sep 13, 2012 at 17:40

answered Sep 12, 2012 at 23:01

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen

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4 Comments

monojohnny Over a year ago

Nice one - I was starting to realized that I needed to code the < > here - but hadn't seen the disable-output-escaping option before. In fact I have resorted to using different characters (French Quotes!) to represent angle-brackets now ! Thanks for the additional tips re: value-of / copy-of as well. cheers

Gabe Rainbow Over a year ago

thanks for that. definitely not for the squeamish readers. or should i say, those into elegance. hhhheee

gioele Over a year ago

For some reasons Saxon 9 insists on escaping the <![CDATA anyhow. At least this is what it does in my XSLT: github.com/gioele/rng-doc/blob/…

Hari Over a year ago

Leaving this note for anyone who runs into this: If you use XmlDocument.CreateNavigator().AppendChild to create the XmlWriter (in C#). the resulting CDATA section will not be escaped. i.e. it will result in <![CDATA instead of <![CDATA

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