javascript 'for' loop in xslt

mhkay · February 3rd, 2007, 01:15 PM

An XSLT stylesheet is an XML document and you will get an XML parser error if you include an unescaped <. You can escape the character either by writing it as < or by putting it in a CDATA section - the two approaches are 100% equivalent.

However, the error "Error: Expected ')'" is clearly from the Javascript parser rather than the XML parser.

Either way, the problem has nothing to do with XSLT.

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

seanmayhew · February 3rd, 2007, 04:30 PM

Not to be argumentative in any way shape or form and I understand your point ......I would like someone to prove to me that a for loop can be done in xslt OUTSIDE OF things like xalan. Simple xslt linked to in an xml doc and opened in IE. A simple javascript section in the head of an html doc cdata or not before apply-templates that contains a for loop.... the reason for this is I have some javascript specific to this element of my workflow that would get lost placing somewhere else.

rushman · February 6th, 2007, 04:26 PM

Sean, here's your proof.

Let's assume you have both "bidon.xml" and "lines.xsl" in the same directory;

=========
bidon.xml (shockingly simple isn't it?)
=========
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="lines.xsl"?>
<bidon/>

=========
lines.xsl (not too scary either)
=========
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <head>
                <title>XSLT Generated HTML</title>
                <script>
            var nbTimes = 10;
            function init(){
                for(var i = 0; i < nbTimes; i++){
                    document.write('line ' + i);
                    document.write('<br/>');
                }
            }
                </script>
            </head>
            <body onload="init()"></body>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

===========
resulting HTML (if you do the actual transformation)
===========
<html>
   <head>
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
      <title>XSLT Generated HTML</title><script>
            var nbTimes = 10;
            function init(){
                for(var i = 0; i < nbTimes; i++){
                    document.write('line ' + i);
                    document.write('<br/>');
                }
            }
                </script></head>
   <body onload="init()"></body>
</html>

If you save bidon.xml and lines.xsl in the same directory and open bidon.xml in IE, you'll see that the script worked perfectly.

Rushman has now left the building...

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