Question

I have some XML data that I want to convert to HTML with XSLT and I have mostly got it right. The problem with my XML input is that it contains inline if statements / boolean expressions that I have no idea how to handle.

<section>
  <title>My Title</title>
  <paragraph>
    <phrase class="inline-if">if_xVariable || if_yVariable</phrase>
    Show this text if if_xVariable or if_yVariable is true.
  </paragraph>
  <paragraph>
    <phrase class="inline-if">if_xVariable &amp;&amp; if_yVariable</phrase>
    Show this text if if_xVariable and if_yVariable is true
  </paragraph>
  <paragraph>
    Always show this text
  </paragraph>
</section>

I have been thinking of adding xslt-vairables with each variable name (e.g. if_xVariable) to true/false and in some way check against them.

How would you go about to solve this problem?

Update This is what I’ve tried

<xsl:template match="section/paragraph">
  <xsl:variable name="inlineif" select="phrase[@class='inline-if']"/>
    <xsl:if test="$inlineif">
      <p>
      <xsl:value-of select="."/>
      </p>
    </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

Since I have neither of if_xVariable or if_yVariable specified, the output should probably be something like

<p>
Always show this text
</p>

but instead I get the output from all of the paragraphs.

Answer 1

XSLT has no built-in dynamic evaluation of expressions. Possible solutions are discussed in the answer to this question.