Removing Tabs from source XML in output from XSLT

[cmay]

I am having this problem...
Lets say that your source XML is formatted like this:
<somenode>
Here is some text
Here is some more text
</somenode>

When to a <xsl:value-of select="somenode" /> I want the output to be
free of the tabs that are included in the source XML.
These tabs are not really part of the content, but rather just there
for formatting reasons.

I tried doing:
<xsl:value-of select='translate(somenode,"&#x9", "")'/>
But that didn't seem to have an effect.


Any way to do this?

 

[Joe Kesselman]

These tabs are not really part of the content, but rather just there

for formatting reasons.

Well, the best answer is not to put them in for formatting, but to
format for humans at the time when humans want to read the data.
However, assuming that you're stuck with them...

<xsl:value-of select='translate(somenode,"&#x9", "")'/>

No, that won't work; translate is strictly a replacement operation, and
can't be used to remove characters.

If you know there's only a single tab, you could use
concat(substring-before(somenode,"&#x9"),
substring-after(somenode,"&#x9"))
If there may be multiple tabs, you need to repeat that until all tabs
have been dealt with -- which in XSLT 1.0 means writing a recursive
named template and invoking it via call-template. (XSLT 2.0 has a
slightly more elegant syntax for writing and calling functions.) I'm
sure there are examples of this approach in the XSLT FAQ, or in many
decent XSLT tutorials.

Or you could invoke a non-XSLT extension function, if your processor
supports that.

 

[Martin Honnen]

cmay wrote:

I tried doing:
<xsl:value-of select='translate(somenode,"&#x9", "")'/>
But that didn't seem to have an effect.

That tab character has code number 9 and a character reference needs to
end with a semicolon so you need
<xsl:value-of select='translate(somenode," ", "")'/>

That should do then in my view, contrary what Joe says, as translate
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#function-translate> indeed removes
characters found in the second argument string for which there are no
corresponding positions in the third argument string.

 

[Joe Kesselman]

Good catch on the missing semicolon, and yes the removal should work; I
was misremembering. (Sigh. Don't type while tired.)

 

[WideBoy]

If you're working on a unix platform another simpler alternative may to
run your source xml file through a utility program such as 'detab' or
'entab'?

This would mean that you would not have to use any form of XSL at all
ofcourse.

HTH,

Naran.

 

[Michael Bednarek]

If you're working on a unix platform another simpler alternative may to
run your source xml file through a utility program such as 'detab' or
'entab'?

[snip]

There are numerous versions of detab available for Win32, too.

 

[cmay]

Thanks for responding guys.
Unfortunately, the typo was just in my newsgroup post, and not in my
code.
I tried it again but the tabs persist.

Even though these are definately tabs in my xml source, I wonder if
they are coming through as spaces somehow.

Anyway thanks for your help.



Chris

 

[Joe Kesselman]

I tried it again but the tabs persist.

Are you sure the rest of your stylesheet is reasonable -- ie, that this
expression is indeed being evaluated at the right places?

 

[George Bina]

If you can use XSLT 2.0 then you can use a character map. Just add the
following lines to your stylesheet and the tabs will be removed from
output:

<xsl:character-map name="test">
<xslutput-character character=" " string=""/>
</xsl:character-map>
<xslutput use-character-maps="test"/>

Best Regards,
George

 

[cmay]

Yea it turned out that my xml editor was converting tabs to spaces.

I found some option to turn that off and the tab removal translate
function works fine.

Thanks guys!

 

[cmay]

Thanks George, I didn't know about that option and it looks pretty
good, good thing to know.

Is there anything similar that will allow for replacement of strings in
this manner?

I see that then 2nd parameter can be a string, but everything I have
read indicates that the first parameter "character" must be a single
character and can't be a string.

I'm guessing there isn't anything to do this other than writing your
own function correct?


Chris

 

[George Bina]

You cannot replace strings, only characters. The replacement is a
string, for instance if you want to write an entity reference for a
specific character then you can map that character to the string that
represents an entity reference to that character.

Best Regards,
George