Not understanding namespaces

skaue · January 30th, 2009, 04:32 PM

I am trying to help a collegue with some XML transformation. I have barely spent time in the XML-jungle, but being a "geek" I'm not afraid to throw myself into new technology, new to me that is.

So I'm trying to use this XML:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Envelope>
  <Header>
    <MessageId>{1071FB4F-6F5F-42D8-92B2-4EF4D50C95F1}</MessageId>
    <SourceEndpointUser />
    <SourceEndpoint>DM1</SourceEndpoint>
    <DestinationEndpoint>DEMO</DestinationEndpoint>
    <Action>readSalesInvoice</Action>
    <RequestMessageId />
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <SalesInvoice xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2006/02/documents/SalesInvoice">
      <DocPurpose>Original</DocPurpose>
      <SenderId>dm1</SenderId>
      <CustInvoiceJour class="entity">
        <Backorder>No</Backorder>
        <CashDisc>49.45</CashDisc>
        <CashDiscCode>5D2%</CashDiscCode>
        <CashDiscDate>2009-01-31</CashDiscDate>
        <CurrencyCode>NOK</CurrencyCode>
        <CustGroup>20</CustGroup>
        <XMLDocPurpose>Original</XMLDocPurpose>
        <CustInvoiceTrans class="entity">
          <CommissAmountCur>157.02</CommissAmountCur>
          <CommissAmountMST>157.02</CommissAmountMST>
          <CommissCalc>Yes</CommissCalc>
          <InventReportDimHistory class="entity">
            <InventDimId>1</InventDimId>
            <InventTransId>5904</InventTransId>
            <InventDim class="entity">
              <inventDimId>1</inventDimId>
              <RecVersion>1</RecVersion>
            </InventDim>
          </InventReportDimHistory>
        </CustInvoiceTrans>
        <TaxTrans class="entity">
          <AccountNum>2710</AccountNum>
          <CurrencyCode>NOK</CurrencyCode>
          <EUROTriangulation>No</EUROTriangulation>
          <Voucher>10000122</Voucher>
        </TaxTrans>
      </CustInvoiceJour>
    </SalesInvoice>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

and using this XSL as input to a transformation where I want the result to be HTML.

HTML Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
	xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
	xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions" 
	xmlns:n1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2006/02/documents/custinvoiceJour" 
	xmlns:xdt="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-datatypes" 
	xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
	<xsl:output version="1.0" method="html" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8" 
		doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" 
		doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"/>
	<xsl:template match="/">
		<xsl:value-of select="n1:SalesInvoice/SenderId" />
		<html>
			<head>
				<title>Test</title>
			</head>
			<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
				test: <xsl:value-of select="n1:SalesInvoice/n1:SenderId" />
			</body>
		</html>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Unfortunately only the HTML markup gets out, not the "SenderId".
Can anyone please try to explain what the purpose of those namespaces are, and perhaps point out if I am doing something completely stupid here. ;-)

Thanks!

mhkay · January 30th, 2009, 04:53 PM

You're nearly there. In fact your problem isn't namespaces at all: it's context. When you do this:

<xsl:value-of select="n1:SalesInvoice/n1:SenderId" />

the context node is the document node, which doesn't have SalesInvoice (in any namespace) as a child. You need

select="Envelope/Body/n1:SalesInvoice/n1:SenderId"

skaue · January 31st, 2009, 07:44 AM

Thanks. That makes sense. However when I tried this instead, it still did not print out expected result behind "test". I expected "dm1", but it's empty :-/

Here is my current xsl:

HTML Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
                xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
                xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions" 
                xmlns:n1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2006/02/documents/custinvoiceJour" 
                xmlns:xdt="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-datatypes" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
                xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <xsl:output version="1.0" method="html" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8" 
              doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" 
              doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"/>
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
			<head>
				<title>
          Test</title>
			</head>
			<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
        test: 
        <xsl:value-of select="Envelope/Body/n1:SalesInvoice/n1:SenderId" />
    </body>
		</html>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

This is the output:

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions" 
xmlns:n1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2006/02/documents/custinvoiceJour" 
xmlns:xdt="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-datatypes" 
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <head>
    <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    <title>
          Test</title>
  </head>
  <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
        test: 
        </body>
</html>

Not sure why it prints out the namespaces inside the HTML tag, but I guess it doesn't hurt.

The program I wrote to test this looks like this:

Code:

using System;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Xsl;

public class XSLDemo
{
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Transform("data.xml", "BCS.xsl");
    }
    public static void Transform(string sXmlPath, string sXslPath)
    {

        var xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
        using (XmlReader src = XmlReader.Create(sXmlPath))
        {
            xslt.Load(sXslPath);
            XmlWriter result = XmlWriter.Create(Console.Out, xslt.OutputSettings);
            if (result != null) xslt.Transform(src, null, result, new XmlUrlResolver());
        }
        // Execute the transform and output the results to a file.
        xslt.Transform(sXmlPath, "books.html");
        Console.ReadKey();


    }
}

Thanks for helping! :-)

Martin Honnen · January 31st, 2009, 08:14 AM

You can choose the prefix as you like but you need to ensure you use the same namespace as in the input XML. In the input XML you have http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamic...s/SalesInvoice whereas in the stylesheet you have xmlns:n1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2006/02/documents/custinvoiceJour" so the namespace does not match.
Use xmlns:n1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2006/02/documents/SalesInvoice" and your stylesheet should output what you are looking for.

Some comments: you are using a version="1.0" stylesheet and you use XslCompiledTransform which is an XSLT 1.0 processor. That way it does not make much sense to use the XSLT/XPath 2.0 function namespace in your stylesheet. You can safely remove that.
And you might want to use exclude-result-prefixes on the xsl:stylesheet element to avoid that unused namespace declarations appear in the result document. If you need namespaces like http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema at all in your stylesheet.

skaue · January 31st, 2009, 11:10 AM

Thanks. I can't believe I didn't see that namespace mismatch! I guess trying "anything" makes you almost blind for the small mistakes. Thanks!! It's transforming correctly. Next step is to use the complete html and not just this "testing"-xsl :-)

Again, thanks!!