Hi all,

I'm having a spot of bother trying to get my XSLT to call external java functions. I am needing the equivalent of Math.pow(a,b). I have declared a java namespace on the stylesheet, as such:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"
                xmlns:java="c://projects/blah/classes/net/blah/transforms"
                exclude-result-prefixes="java">

where my function is a static function in a class called 'Functions' which is in the 'transforms' package. When I try to call it using:

<xsl:value-of select="java:Functions.power(@n)"/>

I get a ClassNotFoundException: transforms/Functions

If I change the namespace path to be /transforms/Functions and call it with 'select="java:power(@n)"' then I get

java.lang.NoSuchMethodException: For extension function, could not find method org.apache.xpath.objects.XNodeSet.power([ExpressionContext,] ).

I am sure I am just missing something obvious, if anyone can point out what I am doing wrong I would be very grateful, thanks!

The way extension functions work depend on which XSLT processor you are using, so that's the first thing you need to tell us.

From the error message, it looks as if you're using Xalan, in which case it might be best to ask on a Xalan list.

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

Ah, apologies for the oversight. Yes I am using the Xalan processor, although to be honest I don't really care which I have to use, as this is the only part of a large project that is using XSLT, so I am free to use whichever gets the job done. Would you be able to help with any other transformer?

I can certainly give you help if you decide to use Saxon.

For info on writing extension functions with Saxon, see http://www.saxonica.com/documentatio...functions.html

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

Thanks for the link. I was interested to note that I could call java functions easily using Saxon, as like I said above it's only Math.pow() I need at this point. So now I have

<xsl:value-of select="math:pow($currentAge,$startAge)" xmlns:math="java:java.lang.Math"/>

But of course this fails as I have not declared the java namespace yet. I am at a loss as to what this should be declared as though?

Thanks again.

Your code looks correct to me: if $currentAge and $startAge are doubles I would expect it to work. How is it failing, and which Saxon version are you using?

(There's no "java" namespace here. The prefix "java:" is being used as part of the namespace URI - technically, the scheme name of the URI).

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

Heh, I'm an idiot. The error was a leftover 'exclude-result-prefixes="java"' statement in the header, from when I was trying to get it to work with Xalan. :)

Many thanks for all your help!