Question

I’m writing an XSLT transformation (for XSL-FO), and need to repeat something for each letter in a string value, for example:

If string is stored in MyData/MyValue string (e.g. MyData.MyValue = “something”), I need an for-each like this one:

<xsl:for-each select="MyData/MyValue"> <!-- What goes here to iterate through letters? -->
  <someTags>
    <xsl:value-of select="Letter" /> <!-- What goes here to output current letter? -->
  </someTags>
</xsl:for-each>

Any ideas?

Answer 1

you could use a call template and pass parameters, then use recursion to call the template untill there are no characters left.

example added below.

on this xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<data>
        <node>something</node>
</data>

and this xslt

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl"
>
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="data/node">
            <xsl:call-template name="for-each-character">                    
                    <xsl:with-param name="data" select="."/>
            </xsl:call-template>
    </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template name="for-each-character">                
                <xsl:param name="data"/>
                <xsl:if test="string-length($data) &gt; 0">
                        <someTags>                            
                                <xsl:value-of select="substring($data,1,1)"/>
                        </someTags>
                        <xsl:call-template name="for-each-character">
                                <xsl:with-param name="data" select="substring($data,2)"/>
                        </xsl:call-template>
                </xsl:if>
        </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

you will then be able to manipulate in the if statement to do further stuff!