Check if string is in element

hykyit · May 1st, 2006, 04:20 AM

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and this is my first post so forgive me if i did anything wrong..

I'm suppose to search if a parameter taken in during compilation exists in the LINE elements which I have done so but..How do i return an error message if the search string does not exist in all of my LINE elements in my XML file? I've thought of and tried some approach like setting a variable/parameter to true if found and many others but it doesnt work..Is there anyway I can count the number of LINE elements that consists of the search string?? Hope you can help me out on this! Thanks a lot!!

joefawcett · May 1st, 2006, 04:47 AM

How are you supposed to return an error message, via the XSLTs normal output or using something like the xsl:message element, which only has limited support in some processors?
Assuming LINE is a child of the context node:

Code:

<xsl:variable name=matchingLines" select="LINE[contains(., $searchParam)"/>
<xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="$matchingLines">

  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:otherwise>


    <xsl:message terminate="yes">No matching LINE elements found!</xsl:message>
  </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

mhkay · May 1st, 2006, 04:51 AM

You can count the lines that contain your parameter like this:

<xsl:param name="searchString">

<xsl:template match="/">
  <numberOfMatchingLines>
    <xsl:value-of select="count(//LINE[contains(., $searchString)]"/>
  </numberOfMatchingLines>
</xsl:template>

If you want the transformation to fail when this count is zero, you can do

<xsl:if test="count(//LINE[contains(., $searchString)] = 0">
  <xsl:message terminate="yes">There are no matching lines</xsl:message>
</xsl:if>

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

hykyit · May 1st, 2006, 09:26 AM

Wow! Thanks a lot Joe and Michael! This really helps me a lot! Didnt know there was so much you can do with XSLT and XPath..But I'd like to know what this does:-

//LINE[contains(text(), $search)]

I only know the contains(text(),$search) part.. I thought contains return true or false only?

Thanks a lot for the reply again!