Question

I’m attempting to build some XML elements based on an XSLT string parameter. The idea is quite simple.

The user specifies a parameter, which is a comma-separated list of names. For each name, I want to write the following to the XML file:

<category>{$string}</category>

Where {$string} is one of the comma-separated values. So if the user provides this parameter: category1, category2, cat3, then I should get this in the XML file:

<category>category1</category>
<category>category2</category>
<category>cat3</category>

It should also be possible to provide an empty string, in which case no XML element is printed.

Note that I am using XSLT 2.0, so feel free to include 2.0-based XPath and XSLT constructs.

Answer 1

This transformation (XSLT 2.0):

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>

 <xsl:param name="pCategories"
 select="'category1, category2, cat3'"/>

 <xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:for-each select="tokenize($pCategories, ',')[.]">
   <category>
    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space()"/>
    </category>
  </xsl:for-each>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on any XML document (not used), produces the wanted, correct result:

<category>category1</category>
<category>category2</category>
<category>cat3</category>