Question

checking for an Null element

<image><a><img src="abcd"/></a></image>

XSLT template:

<xsl:if test="image!=''">
IMAGE HAS TEXT OR INNER ELEMENT
</xsl:if>

I am getting blank output though the “image” element has child elements. and Ideally it is not null.

I have to check the condition that it should have value or the child elements. The child elements can be empty.

How to rectify this.

Thank you

Answer 1

Use:

image[string() or node()]

This evaluates to true() only if there is at least one image child of the current node, such that its string value is non-empty, or it has children (or both).

This can be simplified just to:

 image[node()]

taking into account that in order to have string value, an element must have a text node descendant in its sub-tree.

If you want the string value of image (if any) to be not all-whitespace, modify the first of the above XPath expressions to:

image[normalize-space() or node()]