Question

Can someone please tell me how to print out a variable in my XSL transform? Seems like an easy enough thing to do but I just can’t seem to do it. Here’s the code I have:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> <xsl:stylesheet version='1.0'   xmlns:fn='http://www.w3.org/2005/02/xpath-functions' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'>    <xsl:template name='ControlledListStructure'>     <xsl:param name='xmlElem' />     <xsl:param name='dataName' />      <xsl:element name='{$xmlElem}'>       1: <xsl:text>{$xmlElem}</xsl:text>.       2: {$xmlElem}.     </xsl:element>   </xsl:template>  </xsl:stylesheet> 

If I called this template with a value for xmlElem of ‘Wibble’ (a string – not a node), I would get the following output:

<Wibble>       1: {$xmlElem}.       2: {$xmlElem}. </Wibble> 

So my parameter is coming over properly, I just can’t access it properly. Can someone tell me how I can get $xmlElem to print out properly so that I see:

<Wibble>       1: Wibble.       2: Wibble. </Wibble> 

Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

All answers are missing something important: read further:

Can someone please tell me how to print out a variable in my XSL transform? Seems like an easy enough thing to do but I just can’t seem to do it.

In XSLT 1.0 there are two main ways of producing the contents of an <xsl:variable>, depending on whether it contains a scalar value (string, number or boolean), or has a structured value — a node-set (one or more nodes from xml document(s) ):

1. <xsl:value-of select='$yourscalarVariableName'/> Use this to produce a scalar value. Actually produces a text node, containing this scalar value.

2. <xsl:copy-of select='$yourStructuredVariableName'/> Use this to produce a copy of all nodes contained in the variable.

It is very important to know that if an xsl:variable contains a list of nodes and the <xsl:value-of ...> instruction is used, only the string value of the first node will be produced. This is a frequently committed error and a FAQ.

There is a third way: if the <xsl:variable> should be used in producing an attribute:

  <someLiteralResultElement someAttribute='{$theVariable}'/> 

The XPath expression in the curly braces (called AVT — attribute-value-template) is evaluated and the result is put into the attribute value.

In XSLT 2.0, the <xsl:value-of .../> instruction , when run not in compatibility mode, produces a list of text nodes — one for each node contained in the xsl:variable. When run in compatibility mode (has the attribute version='1.0' specified), the <xsl:value-of> instruction behaves in the same way as it does in XSLT 1.0.

In Xslt 2.0 <xsl:copy-of> behaves in the same way as in XSLT 1.0. However it is recommended to use the new <xsl:sequence> instruction, because the former produces a new copy of every node, while <xsl:sequence> does not produce new copies of nodes.