Question

I have a xml something likethis

<root>
<testxml>
<details  name="test" url="http://www.test.com/test.aspx?val=100&val2=200" />
</testxml>
<root>

When i transform this xml using xslt to another xml

<xsl:output method="html" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8"  />

<xsl:template match="root/testxml/details">
    <convert>
        <xsl:attribute name="url">
            <xsl:value-of select="@url"/>
        </xsl:attribute>
    </convert>

I get the result output as this

<convert url="http://www.test.com/test.aspx?val=100&amp;val2=200">

instead of

<convert url="http://www.test.com/test.aspx?val=100&val2=200">

issue here is: & in url is getting changed to & amp; how can i avoid this ,i want & in url as &.(not & amp;)

i tried <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="@url" />
also but of not use.

could anyone please help me in this..

Answer 1

I get the result output as this

instead of

issue here is: & in url is getting
changed to & amp;

There is no issue and the URL is not changed at all:

To verify this use a transformation like this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output method="text"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="/*">
     <xsl:value-of select="@url"/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when this transformation is applied on the following XML document:

<convert url="http://www.test.com/test.aspx?val=100&amp;val2=200"/>

The result is:

http://www.test.com/test.aspx?val=100&val2=200

So, the URL hasn’t been changed in any way and there is still only a single & character in it.

What you observe is the mandatory escaping of some special characters (typically < and &) in XML, as dictated by the XML Spec.

The escaping of some special characters never alters the content of the string that is escaped — only how it looks like when it is a part of an XML document.

how can i avoid this ,i want & in url
as &.(not & amp;)

You cannot, and as shown above, there is nothing to avoid.