Date Formatting

MargateFan · August 30th, 2006, 06:48 AM

I'm trying to re-format a date and it's starting to drive me insane.
I've got the following XML tag:

Code:

<DateOfTravel>2006-08-29T00:00:00</DateOfTravel>

& need to convert it to:

Code:

<DepartureDate>29 August 2006</DepartureDate>

My XSLT currently has the following:

Code:

   <xsl:element name="DepartureDate">
     <xsl:value-of select="concat(substring(DateOfTravel, 9, 2), ' ')"/>
     <xsl:variable name="month" select="substring(DateOfTravel, 6, 2)"></xsl:variable>
     <xsl:call-template name="date:month-name">
       <xsl:with-param name="month" select="format-number($month, '###')"/>
     </xsl:call-template>
     <xsl:value-of select="concat(' ', substring(DateOfTravel, 1, 4))"/>
   </xsl:element>
.
.
.
.
.
  <date:month-names>
    <date:month>January</date:month>
    <date:month>February</date:month>
    <date:month>March</date:month>
    <date:month>April</date:month>
    <date:month>May</date:month>
    <date:month>June</date:month>
    <date:month>July</date:month>
    <date:month>August</date:month>
    <date:month>September</date:month>
    <date:month>October</date:month>
    <date:month>November</date:month>
    <date:month>December</date:month>
  </date:month-names>

  <xsl:template name="date:month-name">
    <xsl:param name="month" select="0"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="document('')/*/date:month-names/date:month[$month]"/>
  </xsl:template>

I've tried it without the <xsl:variable name="month" select="substring(DateOfTravel, 6, 2)"></xsl:variable> & just using the substring(DateOfTravel, 6, 2) in the with-param, plus I've tried it without the format-number as well - all seem to give me January as the month.
However if I just 'hard-code' a number in the with-param it works OK, which seems to imply that the "date:month-name" template is OK, it's the parameter that isn't, but running it in debug the parameter is '08'

I'm sure it's something straight-forward, help please

as always - thanks in advance

mhkay · August 30th, 2006, 06:55 AM

The meaning of a predicate, like $month in

document('')/*/date:month-names/date:month[$month]

depends on whether it's a number or something else. In your case it's something else - a string - because for some reason you decided to put the value through format-number(). When you use a string as a predicate, values are selected if the string is non-zero-length, and are omitted otherwise.

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

joefawcett · August 30th, 2006, 07:28 AM

To add to Michael's reply you can fix by either making sure that $month is numeric, wrapping it in number() for example. Alternatively you can force the issue in the template:

Code:

<xsl:value-of select="document('')/*/date:month-names/date:month[position() = $month]"/>

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

MargateFan · August 30th, 2006, 07:42 AM

Cheers Micheal & Joe - it's working sound as a pound. I'd just changed it to

Code:

number(substring(DateOfTravel, 6, 2))

when Joe's relpy came in.