Hi,

I am new to XSLT and I want to do the following:

From a document that looks like this:

<content>
  <text>This is the var1 I want to var2</text>
  <replacements>
    <word>
      <from>var1</from>
      <to>text</to>
    </word>
    <word>
      <from>var2</from>
      <to>replace</to>
    </word>
  </replacements
</content>

I want to replace the 'from' element with the 'to' element on the 'text' element.

Any help will be appreciated.

String replacement is easier in XSLT 2.0 than in 1.0.

Start with http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/replace.html

Note also that there's a useful string-replace template at www.exslt.org.

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

Thanx

Hi mhkay, all,

I tried your xslt in the xlst 2.0 wrox book. How do I extend to multiple characters? For example "copyright" symbol as well.

My source:
<root>
<content>Register symbol® Copyright symbol© registration symbol again® trademark symbol™ copyright symbol again©</content>
</root>

My output:
<root>
<content>Register symbol#174; Copyright symbol© registration symbol again#174; trademark symbol™ copyright symbol again©</content>
</root>

Your XSL (slighly modified)

<xsl:transform xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
    <!--
-->
    <xsl:param name="reg.search" select="'®'"/>
    <xsl:param name="reg.replace">
        <xsl:text><![CDATA[#174;]]></xsl:text>
    </xsl:param>
    <xsl:param name="copy.search" select="'©'"/>
    <xsl:param name="copy.replace">
        <xsl:text><![CDATA[#153;]]></xsl:text>
    </xsl:param>
    <!--
-->
    <xsl:template name="search-replace">
        <xsl:param name="text"/>
          <xsl:param name="search" select="document('replace.xml')/*/replace/from" />
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="contains($text, $reg.search)">
                <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text, $reg.search)"/>
                <xsl:value-of select="$reg.replace" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
                <xsl:call-template name="search-replace">
                    <xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text, $reg.search)"/>
                </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:value-of select="$text"/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
    <!--
-->
    <xsl:template match="*">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <!--
-->
    <xsl:template match="text()">
        <xsl:call-template name="search-replace">
            <xsl:with-param name="text" select="."/>
        </xsl:call-template>
    </xsl:template>
    <!--
-->
</xsl:transform>

One tag not needed. Forgot to omit

<xsl:param name="search" select="document('replace.xml')/*/replace/from" />

Are you using XSLT 1.0 or 2.0? In 2.0, it's much easier to use the replace() function.

With the 1.0 solution, you basically need to call the search-replace template once for each from/to replacement pair. If you know statically how many replacements are needed (in your case two) then just call the template twice. If the number of replacements is a dynamic list, then you need another level of iteration, typically implemented using head-tail recursion.

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