Question

I am trying to create a new XML file from an exisiting one using XSL. When writing the new file, I want to mask data appearing in the accountname field.

This is how my XML looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Sumit>
    <AccountName>Sumit</AccountName>
      <CCT_datasetT id="Table">
       <row>
         <CCTTitle2>Title</CCTTitle2>
       </row>
       </CCT_datasetT>
</Sumit>

Here is my XSL Code:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="no" />

  <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="@*">
    <xsl:attribute namespace="{namespace-uri()}" name="{name()}"/>
  </xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="AccountName">
<AccountName>acc_no</AccountName>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

When I apply the XSL code to my XML, I get the following output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<Sumit>
<AccountName>acc_no</AccountName>
<CCT_datasetT id="">
<row>
<CCTTitle2>Title</CCTTitle2>
</row>
</CCT_datasetT>
</Sumit>

with the following issues:

1) It creates the output using UTF-16 encoding

2) The output of the second line is:

<CCT_datasetT id="">

The attribute value(Table) is missing.

Can anyone please tell me how do I get rid of these two issues. Many thanks.

---

@Evan Lenz:

Here is the javascript code:

var oArgs = WScript.Arguments;

if (oArgs.length == 0)
{
   WScript.Echo ("Usage : cscript xslt.js xml xsl");
   WScript.Quit();
}
xmlFile = oArgs(0) + ".xml";
xslFile = oArgs(1) + ".xsl";


var xml = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xml.async = false
xml.load(xmlFile)

// Load the XSL
var xsl = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xsl.async = false
xsl.load(xslFile)

// Transform
var msg = xml.transformNode(xsl)



var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");



// Open the text file at the specified location with write mode

var txtFile = fso.OpenTextFile("Output.xml", 2, false, 0);

txtFile.Write(msg);
txtFile.close();

It creates the output in a new file “Output.xml”, but I don’t know why the encoding is getting changed. I am more concerned about it, because of the following reason:

My input XML containg the following code:

<Status></Status>

And in the output it appears as

<Status>
</Section>

A carriage return is introduced for all empty tags. I am not sure, if it has something to do with the encoding. Please suggest.

Many Thanks.

Answer 1

Remove your second template rule. The first template rule (the identity rule) will already copy attributes for you. By including the second one (which has the explicit <xsl:attribute> instruction), you’re creating a conflict–an error condition, and the XSLT processor is recovering by picking the one that comes later in your stylesheet. The reason the “id” attribute is empty is that your second rule is creating a new attribute with the same name but with no value. But again, that second rule is unnecessary anyway, so you should just delete it. That will solve the missing attribute value issue.

As for the output encoding, it sounds like your XSLT processor is not honoring the <xsl:output> directive you’ve given it, or it’s being invoked in a context (such as a server-side framework?) where the encoding is determined by the framework, rather than the XSLT code. What XSLT processor are you using and how are you invoking it?

UPDATE (re: character encoding):

The save Method (DOMDocument) documentation says this:

Character encoding is based on the encoding attribute in the XML declaration, such as <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>. When no encoding attribute is specified, the default setting is UTF-8.

I would try using transformNodeToObject() and save() instead of outputting to a string.

I haven’t tested this, but you probably want something like this:

var result = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

// Transform
xml.transformNodeToObject(xsl, result);

result.save("Output.xml");

UPDATE (re: unwanted whitespace):

If you want to have ultimate control over what whitespace appears in the result, you should not specify indent=”yes” on the <xsl:output> element. Try removing that.