Problem with passing parameters and Xalan

pan69 · December 13th, 2007, 08:08 AM

Hi guys,

I'm having trouble passing parameters to xalan. When I do the following:

Code:

<xsl:param name="language" select="otherwise" />


<xsl:template match="if">
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="$language">                
            <xsl:value-of select="$language" />
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:value-of select="otherwise" />
        </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

It actually outputs my param value instead of the node value. I have to following source XML:

Code:

<if>
    <cpp>int</cpp>
    <java>Int</java>
    <otherwise>int</otherwise>
</if>

I pass my parameter to xalan as:

Code:

-param language cpp

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks!

samjudson · December 13th, 2007, 08:27 AM

The parameter you are passing in is just a string, so test="'cpp'" evalutates to true, and <xsl:value-of select="'cpp'"> outputs the string you input.

<xsl:template match="if">
  <xsl:variable name="node" select="*[name()=$language]"/>
<xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="$node">
            <xsl:value-of select="$node" />
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:value-of select="otherwise" />
        </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>

in XSLT 2.0 this could be abbreviated to something like:

<xsl:value-of select="(*[name()=$language] , otherwise)[1]" />

/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/

mhkay · December 13th, 2007, 01:36 PM

You've passed it a string so it has output that string. If you want it to output the value of the node whose name is equal to that string, you have to say so:

<xsl:value-of select="*[name()=$language]"/>

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

pan69 · December 13th, 2007, 06:06 PM

Fantastic. Thanks a lot guys!