i need help with the following xsl:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:variable name="request">
            <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="string('<![CDATA[')"/>
            <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
            <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="string(']]>')"/>
        </xsl:variable>
    <xsl:value-of select="$request"/>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

if i give the following as input to this xsl:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<g>
    <h>
        <a>value1</a>
        <b>value2</b>
    </h>
</g>

instead of getting the xml message as such within the CDATA tags, i get the following:

<![CDATA[value1value2]]>

my idea is to treat this xml as a string and pass the xml to a compression function. which will return a compressed string encoded in base 64 format.

<xsl:variable name="shortVersion" select="dp:deflate($request)"/>

now instead of the xml request only the texts present in the xml is going as input to the function.

how can i retrieve the xml as such?

Instead of

<xsl:value-of select="$request"/>

do

<xsl:copy-of select="$request"/>

You can't rely on disable-output-escaping working when writing to a variable. It's an instruction to the serializer, and only takes effect if the system decides to serialize the tree. I can't see why you want the CDATA section anyway - the purpose of CDATA is to say that things like <a>..</a> which look like XML markup are not to be treated as XML markup, whereas it sounds as if you actually do want them treated as markup.


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

yeah ther is a serializer function available in the appliance.. thanks KAY

I'm not sure if I'm experiencing the same problem but any time I try to use <xsl:value-of or copy-of or param and try to include a < character in the select string I get an XSLT compile error: {"'<', hexadecimal value 0x3C, is an invalid attribute character. Line 6, position 26."}.

Example: <xsl:value-of select="'<'"/>

The < shows up in my editor as opening a new XML tag no matter how I try to embed it in quotes, functions etc. I am admittedly fairly new to XSL but I haven't been able to find any specific examples of using the < in a string until the above post. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Jeff

>any time I try to use <xsl:value-of or copy-of or param and try to include a < character in the select string I get an XSLT compile error

No, you get an XML parsing error - the XSLT processor doesn't even get to see the stylesheet if it's not well-formed XML. In any XML document, a "<" character in attribute or element content needs to be escaped as &lt;

I didn't spot this error in the original post.

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

Thanks very much. I see now where I was confused.