Hello, I am trying to retrieve a "Colspan" value out of my XML element and use that in my XSLT.
As you can see below i am using the Variable $vColSpan and trying to use that to set the
number-columns-spanned table-cell attribute. in this form it states i can't put any other
elements in the XSL:Number but when i try and use a straigh t variable with the select in it i get an
invalid property type for the number-columns-spanned.

I suppose the issue is retrieveing a numeric value into a "variable" and passing that somehow into a FO element attribute????

Any suggestions would be great!


<xsl:for-each select="./topSections">
    <xsl:variable name="vColSpan"><xsl:value-of select="colSpan" /></xsl:variable>
    <fo:table-cell border-width="1pt" border-style="solid" number-columns-spanned="$vColSpan">
        <fo:block text-align="center">
           <xsl:value-of select="description" />
        </fo:block>
    </fo:table-cell>
</xsl:for-each>

you want

     number-columns-spanned="{$vColSpan}"

I would also suggest

<xsl:variable name="vColSpan" select="colSpan"/>

The construct involving a child xsl:value-of element is not only more tedious to write, it's also far more expensive to execute, because it constructs a result tree fragment (two nodes and lots of overhead such as base URI, unique node identities, etc) when all you want is a number. I don't know why so many people prefer to declare variables in this inefficient way.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Thanks you so Much Michael. That worked like a charm! Thanks for the synatx info as well, i have applied that to all my variables now.

Grant