Dear All,

I have an XSL stylesheet which uses javascript to apply various filters and sorts. The user can select values from lists in a <FORM> and then click on 'select' to apply the filter.

Here is an example of the call to the javascript code:

<input type="button" value="Select" onClick="ApplyFilter(document.formfilt.myfilter.va lue)"/>

The call could also be a literal value: ApplyFilter('John Smith Ltd.')

However, what I would like to do now is to link the form back on itself by making hyperlinks activate the filter code.

For example, I would create hyperlinks in tables (e.g. each company) thus ...

<a href='ApplyFilter('John Smith Ltd.')'>John Smith Ltd.</a>
<a href='ApplyFilter('Peter Brown Ltd.')'>Peter Brown Ltd.</a>

Of course the list of companies would be stored in an XML file and would be declared in a template. So the syntax which I need here is a way for the stylesheet to pass the value retrieved from each particular entry in the XML to the javascript procedure ApplyFilter().

I am not sure if this is possible but I really hope it is because it would mean that my users could then click on a company name and the view would flip to display details for that company. Such a feature would dramatically increase comfort.

Anyway, I hope that someone out there can help me with this?

Regards and thanks,
Alan Searle.

It looks to me as if the Javascript you talk about is being generated by the XSLT stylesheet as part of an HTML document. As far as the XSLT is concerned, the Javascript is just text, and you generate it in the same way as you generate any other text. Work out what HTML/Javascript you want to generate, and then write the XSLT code to do it. For example, you can write in your stylesheet:

<xsl:for-each select="company">
  <p><a href="ApplyFilter('{name}')">
     <xsl:value-of select="name"/>
  </a></p>

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

Hi Michael,

Super: That worked great! These links will significantly increase navigation comfort in the XSL forms!

However, I couldn't get the syntax to work exactly as I wanted and so took a rather round-about route. Here is what I arrived at in the end:

<xsl:variable name="pcredcodestore1" select="cred"/>
<td onClick="ApplyFilter('{$pcredcodestore1}');">
<xsl:value-of select="cred" />
</td>

It's OK but I have two questions which could help to improve it:

1. Is there a way for me to avoid using a variable ($pcredcodestore1) to store the value 'cred'?
2. I wanted to have the call as a hyperlink rather than an 'onClick' event but the browser returned a message of 'internet address not found' when I put the call in href syntax. Is there a way that I can specify here that it is not an internet address but a call to javascript?

Thanks very much for your help.

Regards,
Alan.

(1) is there a way to avoid the variable? Yes, change

<xsl:variable name="pcredcodestore1" select="cred"/>
<td onClick="ApplyFilter('{$pcredcodestore1}');">

to

<td onClick="ApplyFilter('{cred}');">

(2) Is there a way that I can specify here [in href] that it is not an internet address but a call to javascript?

That's an HTML question not an XSLT question. I think most browsers allow href="javascript:......" but you'll have to look somewhere for the details.

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

Hi Michael,

Fantastic: Both your suggestions worked perfectly!

Thanks,
Alan.