line breaks

mister_mister · March 17th, 2008, 11:01 AM

ok, ive googled line breaks in XSLT a ton and have tried every suggestion ive run across, all with no success. im trying to add a line break to my html output (not a <br />). any ideas?

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="text" />
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <div id="bannerLinksContainer">
      <ul id="bannerLinks">
        <xsl:for-each select="MenuDataResult/Item/Item/Menu/Item">
          <li>
            <xsl:if test="position() = 1">
              <xsl:attribute name="id">firstBannerLink</xsl:attribute>
            </xsl:if>
            <a href="{ItemLink}">
              <xsl:value-of select="ItemTitle" />
            </a>
          </li>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </ul>
    </div>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

so far, ive tried:

Code:

<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>

#xA;

<xsl:text>#xA;</xsl:text>

#32;#xA;#xD;

any help is appreciated. happy st. patty's day!
CHEERS!
steve

Martin Honnen · March 17th, 2008, 11:10 AM

I am not sure why you use xsl:output method="text" when your stylesheet creates HTML elements like div or ul or li elements.
You might want to try xsl:output method="html" instead, or if you want the output to be indented then you can try xsl:output method="html" indent="yes".

As for inserting line breaks, your attempts with xsl:text should work. However you need to be aware that browsers/user agents that render your HTML collapse white space including line breaks so you might not see any line breaks if the browser for instance renders

Code:

<p>Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
</p>

that will be rendered as

Code:

Line 1 Line 2 Line 3

mhkay · March 17th, 2008, 11:11 AM

First thing is to change

<xsl:output method="text" />

to

<xsl:output method="html" />

You can get a line break in your output using

<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>

But remember that it won't render as a line break in the browser.

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

mister_mister · March 17th, 2008, 11:16 AM

oops, sorry - i orginally had <xsl:output method="html" /> but i changed it to "text" over the course of trying get my line break.

hmmm, so what if i *need* the browser to recognize a line break? how would i go about that? (death to IE6!)

thanks,
steve

Martin Honnen · March 17th, 2008, 11:22 AM

It is not an XSLT problem anymore, it is rather a HTML and/or CSS problem, use the 'pre' element and the proper CSS property e.g.

Code:

<pre style="white-space: pre;">Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
</pre>

will render three lines.

bonekrusher · March 17th, 2008, 11:23 AM

why not <br/>?

mhkay · March 17th, 2008, 11:26 AM

To generate a new line in the rendered output, write a <br/> element.

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

mister_mister · March 17th, 2008, 11:31 AM

i apologize for the confusion, but the <br /> tag or CSS won't work to solve my problem. this is my current output which never wraps to the next line:

<div id="bannerLinksContainer"><ul id="bannerLinks"><li id="firstBannerLink"><a href="/#">Jobs</a></li>...</ul></div>

what i need to output is *exactly*:

<div id="bannerLinksContainer">
  <ul id="bannerLinks">
    <li id="firstBannerLink"><a href="/#">Jobs</a></li>
    ...
  </ul>
</div>

i thought the <xsl:text> tag with a line break within it would've worked, but to no avail.
steve

Martin Honnen · March 17th, 2008, 11:38 AM

Which XSLT processor are you using?

Martin Honnen · March 17th, 2008, 11:45 AM

Does it help if you put xml:space="preseve" on your stylesheet e.g

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  version="1.0"
  xml:space="preserve">

?