Question regarding the display of <a> tags in xml

tajjyarden · March 21st, 2007, 11:43 AM

Hello,

Iâm new to the group, and fairly new to XSL. Iâm using XML version 1.0 and XSL version 1.0. Iâm building a site with PHP and I have a message stored in a MySQL database that Iâm trying to display to the user. This is what the message looks like in the database:

Code:

One of the swarms you have joined called "Whiskies Cat Food" has entered a bid battle.  To view this swarm, click <a href="index.php?module=swarm&amp;action=view&amp;swarmId=1">here</a>.

My xml looks like this:

Code:

<message>
<from>Whiskies Cat Food</from>
<subject>Swarm In Bid Battle!</subject>
<timeSent>20070321113046</timeSent>
<message><![CDATA[One of the swarms you have joined called "Whiskies Cat Food" has entered a bid battle.  To view this swarm, click <a href="index.php?module=swarm&amp;action=view&amp;swarmId=1">here</a>.]]></message>
<deleteUrl>index.php?module=myeswarm&amp;action=deleteMessage&amp;messageId=35</deleteUrl>
</message>

Unfortunately the XSL displays it exactly as whatâs in the database, and the anchor tags donât become a link. If I remove the <![CDATA[]]> from the XML the XSL just displays the message as the following and throws out the anchor tags completely:

Code:

One of the swarms you have joined called "Whiskies Cat Food" has entered a bid battle.  To view this swarm, click here.

Can you help me to get the anchor tag to display as an actual link that can be clicked on?
Thanks,
Tim

mhkay · March 21st, 2007, 11:54 AM

You seem to have two problems. The first is that when you extract the XML from the database, it is being wrapped in CDATA. The purpose of CDATA is to tell the parser that what it contains is character data rather than markup, so you should never wrap XML in a CDATA section if you want to treat it as markup. I don't know how you are extracting the data from MySQL and I don't know MySQL so I can't advise you how to correct this.

Your second problem: you say that when you remove the CDATA tags, the <a> tags are being ignored. This means there is a bug in your stylesheet. You haven't shown us your stylesheet, so I can't help you find the bug. Except that this kind of problem is usually caused by inappropriate use of xsl:value-of rather than xsl:copy-of.

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