how to restrict strings with particular characters

srini · November 28th, 2003, 01:55 AM

Suppose i have an XML file, it contains some strings, now i have to write an xsl file to display the strings. there are some constraints to display the strings.
1. it should not display the strings with some special characters like +,/,=, etc.
2. it should display strings only with characters and _ .
3. if it having any other special characters it should display only ?.
please help me.

How can we validate it?
suppose this is the xml file, here it should display only srinir and ramesh_l
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<emp>
<name>srini r</name>
<name>ralla+ srinu</name>
<name>(rama)</name>
<name>srinir</name>
<name>ramesh_l</name>
</emp>

please help me.
thanks in advance.
srini.

srini

armmarti · November 28th, 2003, 02:58 AM

Try this (not tested):

Code:

    <xsl:variable name="allowable-characters" select="'#x20;#x9;#xD;#xA;abcdef...ABCDEF...123...'"/>
     <xsl:template match="name">
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="contains(translate(., '+-/=', '++++'), '+')"/>
            <xsl:when test="string-length(translate(., $allowable-characters, '')) > 0">?#xA0;</xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="."/>#xA0;</xsl:otherwise> 
        </xsl:choose>   
     </xsl:template>

If you'll have problems with the code, let me know.

Regards,
Armen

armmarti · November 28th, 2003, 03:00 AM

Ampersands have disappeared (as always) in character references. Put them, don't forget :)

srini · November 28th, 2003, 03:23 AM

That is not working. i am getting output as

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
?#xA0;

?#xA0;
?#xA0;
?#xA0;
if i want to generate xml file from it.

srini

armmarti · November 28th, 2003, 04:03 AM

Srini,

you have to replace "..." in the "allowable-characters" variable value with proper sequences. Since Unicode has very big set of characters, it is more convenient to have a sequence of allowable characters (as I understand these allowable characters are all whitespace characters, all letters(small and capital) and digits). So, when I'm applying the source

<emp>
<name>xyz</name>
<name>ab+abc</name>
<name>-fff-)</name>
<name>abc</name>
<name>def</name>
</emp>

to the stylesheet I've posted (without any change; though I've posted an excerpt which really needs some editing and I supposed you'll do the necessary post-editing) I'm getting

Code:

 ? 

 
 abc 
 def

I just wanted to show the idea behind.

Armen

srini · November 28th, 2003, 04:36 AM

Armmarti,
i did'nt understand your solution properly. i think you did not understand the question properly. what ever the strings which are there in the xml file, our xslt should display only strings with allowed characters.
allowed charecters are
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
0123456789 and _(underscore).
if the string contains other than these chracters it should not display the string.
srini

srini

armmarti · November 28th, 2003, 07:03 AM

You said that:

Quote:

quote:
1. it should not display the strings with some special characters like +,/,=, etc.
2. it should display strings only with characters and _ .
3. if it having any other special characters it should display only ?.

From this I understand that you are separating all characters into 3 groups:
1. Those characters in the ASCII set which are niether letters nor digits nor underscore.
2. Those characters in the ASCII set which are letters or digits or underscore.
3. All other characters(potentially in Unicode)

So, my first solution is doing that separation. And I think that you didn't look at the code even before running it: you tried to run it without understanding it. We try to give hints or ideas to help people to accomplish their tasks and sometimes we give whole stylesheets when we think that it's really necessary, and any excerpt or comment is not satisfactory.
Nevertheless, in your last post you say that you need only such strings which don't contain anything except characters in the set you specified. In that case, you must do the following:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <head>
                <title></title>
            </head>
            <body>
                <table border="1">
                    <tr>
                        <th>Original strings</th>
                        <th>Filtered strings</th>
                    </tr>
                    <xsl:apply-templates select="emp/name"/>
                </table>
            </body>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>   
    <xsl:variable name="allowable-characters" select="'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789_'"/>
     <xsl:template match="name">
         <tr>
             <td>
                 <xsl:value-of select="."/>
             </td>
            <td>
                <xsl:choose>

                    <xsl:when test="string-length(translate(., $allowable-characters, '')) > 0">?</xsl:when>
                    <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="."/></xsl:otherwise> 
                </xsl:choose>   
            </td>
         </tr>
     </xsl:template>       
</xsl:stylesheet>

Armen