Namespace disappears on transformation

Veeneck · September 12th, 2006, 10:25 AM

I'm converting XML to an Excel format using XSL. When I run this on localhost, everything works fine. Then, on my server this is what happens:

<Data ss:Type="String">Hello</Data>

gets turned into

<Data Type="String">Hello</Data>

The ss: is getting stripped, which then breaks the export. Both localhost and the server appear to have the same XSL settings. They are running PHP and Apache on Linux. I don't know if this is a server setting or a code problem - i'm not quite sure where to look or what terminology to search for. Any help is appreciated greatly.

mhkay · September 12th, 2006, 11:24 AM

You say that (A) "gets turned into" (B), but you don't make it clear what process is taking place that modifies the file incorrectly. You need to find out what is changing the attribute name, and fix it.

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

Veeneck · September 12th, 2006, 11:34 AM

Just a normal transformation with PHP. The following works fine on localhost:

Code:

$doc = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
$xsheet = new DOMDocument();
$xsl = new XSLTProcessor();

$doc->loadXML($xml);
$xsheet->load('excel-format.xsl');

$xsl->importStyleSheet($xsheet);
echo $xsl->transformToXML($doc);

In the example above, $xml is a valid XML string.

joefawcett · September 12th, 2006, 11:38 AM

Line 14 of your stylesheet could be causing problems.

http://p2p.wrox.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49630

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

mhkay · September 12th, 2006, 11:43 AM

You're guessing wildly Joe, I bet it's really line 49.

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

joefawcett · September 12th, 2006, 11:48 AM

My best guess is that the stylesheet is pulling in some external file that isn't available from the live system, maybe due to permissions or an incorrectly specified URI, although I can't think of any specific scenario that would lead to the particular problem.

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

Veeneck · September 12th, 2006, 12:00 PM

Sorry about that. Since everything worked as intended on localhost, I didn't feel that posting the actual XSL would lead to anything. I have tried every possible combination of namespaces/setups found online, and everything works locally. The current setup is:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

<xsl:template match="/">

<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

And then the rest of the file ...

I've tried every combination of the above from ss:Workbook to full declarations. Everything works locally, which is why I originally thought it may be a server setting that I am unfamiliar with. Another interesting thing is that only ss: gets stripped. x: remains as it should, and the rest of the output is correct.

Thanks again for looking into this.

joefawcett · September 13th, 2006, 01:30 AM

Again without seeing the whole XML input, XSLT and result I've little idea but my guess is that the output is actually well formed, it's just that one uses a default namespace declaration and one doesn't, maybe a different version of the XSLT processor of a different config, I'm not familiar with the PHP XML library.

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)