Question

In my web application, I display the search results using XSLT.
There are some hard coded text in XSLT file which I want to make language independent.

XSLT:

<xsl:if test="$IsEmpty">
    <table cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1" style="width:100%;border-top-style:solid;border-bottom-style:solid;border-left-style:solid;border-right-style:solid;border-top-color:gray;border-bottom-color:gray;border-left-color:gray;border-right-color:gray;border-top-width:1px;border-bottom-width:1px;border-left-width:1px;border-right-width:1px;">
        <tr>
            <td style="text-align:center;">
                There are no blog posts to display.
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</xsl:if>

Is it possible to pick the text "There are no blog posts to display." from a resource file?

Answer 1

I’m assuming that by “resource file” you mean a regular resx that is compiled into the assembly. In which case, not directly from xslt; however, you could add an extension object and use a key-base approach, i.e.

<xsl:value-of select="resx:getString('noposts')"/>

The “resx” alias would be mapped (xmlns) to a uri that you use when creating your xslt wrapper in C#. For example, with the xmlns (in the xslt preamble):

xmlns:resx="myextnuri"

we can map that in C# via:

public class MyXsltExtension {
    public string getString(string key) {
        return "TODO: Read from resx: " + key;
    }
}

and attach this to the namespace:

XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
xslt.Load("xslt.xslt");
XsltArgumentList args = new XsltArgumentList();
object obj = new MyXsltExtension();
args.AddExtensionObject("myextnuri", obj);
using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create("out.xml")) {
    xslt.Transform("xml.xml", args, writer);
}

We now have full control to inject managed code (as extensions) into our xslt.