XSLT issue with reading in non-xml data

Question

I am newbie to XSLT.

I have a requirement to read a URL and convert some of its values into XML. I wrote a XSLT that has to take URL as the input value and create a XML file from some of the content of the URL value.

When I debugged the XSLT in XMLSPY, I noticed that the URL value is not being picked up by inputValue variable in the below code. I am not sure if my approach to input the URL and the template match are wrong.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Input to XSLT:

http://host:port/abc/xyz1/6xyz6?qq=123&pp=3

Here the XSLT:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:nnc="Nnc" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions">
    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:param name="inVal" select="xs:string(http://host:port/abc/xyz1/6xyz6?qq=123&pp=3)"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:variable name="inputValue" select="$inVal"/>
            <xsl:if test="string-length($inputValue)=0">
                <xsl:message terminate="yes">
                inputValue is blank
                </xsl:message>
            </xsl:if>
            <xsl:variable name="value" as="xs:string" select="substring-after($inputValue, 'abc/' )"/>
            <xsl:variable name="tokenizedValues" select="tokenize($value,'/')"/>
            <xsl:for-each select="$tokenizedValues">
                <xsl:if test="position() = 1">
                    <id>
                        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
                    </id>
                </xsl:if>
            </xsl:for-each>
        </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

The desired XML output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<id>6xyz6</id>
<qq>123</qq>
<pp>123</pp>

What is your current result? If I'm not mistaken, the input to an XSLT has to be an XML document (even if it's just a single empty element). So your input could be something llke <url>http://host:port/abc/xyz1/6xyz6?qq=123&pp=3</url>, and you could just access it in that template as .. — JLRishe
– JLRishe, Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 2:04
Currently the result is empty as inputValue is blank. I am using XSLT 2.0 which as per documentation would allow NON-XML data as input... — Dev
– Dev, Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 2:21
Ok, well $inVal is a parameter, so unless you are passing your value in as a parameter, I don't think $inVal will have the value you want. How about just trying . to get the input value, as in: <xsl:value-of select="." />? — JLRishe
– JLRishe, Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 3:35
Did you mean change this <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:variable name="inputValue" select="$inVal"/> to <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:variable name="inputValue" select="."/>. If so, the inputValue is having the entire xslt as a document instead of the url as the value. Sorry for the confusion as I am a newbie - code example is appreciated. Thanks! — Dev
– Dev, Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 7:24
With XSLT 2.0, if you use a primary input document and template match="/", you need to feed an XML document. You can however read in a text document as secondary input as I have shown in my answer and if you don't have and don't want an XML input as well you can start the transformation with a named template (e.g. <xsl:template name="main"><xsl:variable name="inputData" select="unparsed-text('http://example.com/foo')/>...</xsl:template>), you only need to make sure you use the proper options to start processing with that template (with Saxon 9 from the cmmd line -it:main). — Martin Honnen
– Martin Honnen, Commented Jul 28, 2013 at 12:06

Martin Honnen · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-27 09:03:40Z

1

Well if you want to pull in a text file then with XSLT 2.0 and later you can do that but not by simply using a URL, you need to call the unparsed-text function e.g.

<xsl:variable name="inputData" as="xs:string" select="unparsed-text('http://example.com/foo')"/>

See http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#unparsed-text, depending on the encoding of your text document you need to add a second parameter when calling the function.

answered Jul 27, 2013 at 9:03

Martin Honnen

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