Url Variables

cbevey · December 16th, 2005, 08:37 AM

Im having difficulty passing a variable through a URL so that an xsl page can read it. The setup I have is basically a coldfusion page which reads in the xml page and the xsl page and combines them. This page is called sport.cfm. This is also the page that the url parameter is passed to. ie sport.cfm?sportid=1

I need to access that id in the xsl page so that by using the xsl code I can select the correct part of the xml page.

My basic problem is getting the xsl page to recognise the url variable. Once I can access that I can do the rest.

mhkay · December 16th, 2005, 09:07 AM

You haven't supplied much detail.

Extract the query parameters in the calling application, and supply the values as parameters to the stylesheet using global <xsl:param> declarations.

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

cbevey · December 16th, 2005, 11:31 AM

Ah right so extract it in the coldfusion page which calls the xml and xsl pages? I have tried this and it doesnt work.

Below is the coldfusion page.

sport.cfm?id=1

<cfset sportid = #url.id#>
<cfset MyXmlFile = Expandpath("olympics.xml")>
<cffile action="READ" variable="xmlInput" file="#MyXmlFile#">
<cfset MyXmlFile = Expandpath("b.xsl")>
<cffile action="READ" variable="xslInput" file="#MyXmlFile#">
<cfset xmlOutput = XMLTransform(xmlInput, xslInput)>

<cfcontent type="text/plain" reset="yes">
<cfoutput>#xmloutput#</cfoutput>

The xsl is below.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method='html' omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
<xsl:param name="sportid" />

  <html>
  <head>
            <title>Events Page</title>
        </head>
  <body>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="events/category[categoryid=$sportid]" />
     <xsl:value-of select="$sportid"></xsl:value-of>
    </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="category">
   <xsl:value-of select="text()" /> <br/>
   <xsl:value-of select="categoryinfo/p/text()" /> <br/>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="event" />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="event">
  <a href="event.cfm?id={eventid}"> <xsl:value-of select="eventname/text()" /></a> <br/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

mhkay · December 16th, 2005, 12:13 PM

I don't know anything about ColdFusion, I'm afraid. I would be surprised if just doing

<cfset sportid = #url.id#>

is enough to set a value for the sportid parameter in your stylesheet: I would have thought it just sets a local variable in ColdFusion.

(Why did they choose this weird pseudo-XML syntax?)

Look in the ColdFusion transformation API for an instruction to set stylesheet parameters.

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

platformrogue · December 20th, 2005, 04:38 PM

This is a little brute force but I believe you can solve your problem by using the ColdFusion replace function on the xslInput variable after you read it in.
Replace(string, substring1, substring2 [, scope ])

If you change the following - changes in bold:

<cffile action="READ" variable="xslInputtemp" file="#MyXmlFile#">
<cfset xslInput = Replace(xslInput,"$sportid",URL.id,"ALL")<cfset xmlOutput = XMLTransform(xmlInput, xslInput)>

That should alter your XSL and replaces any instance of $sportid with the value of URL.id.

Good Luck,
Tom

cbevey · December 21st, 2005, 10:33 AM

Thank you very much that did the trick.