XSL transformation in browser outputs data (text nodes) only

JohnBampton · March 10th, 2009, 03:42 AM

Okay this might seem like a silly easy question, but here goes.

Why is it that when I open the following XML document in the browser, either firefox or IE that all I get is the data (text nodes) output.
Note that the xml file is linked to the xsl file below as well.

When I run the transformation inside any application ie. xmlspy/oxygen/jdeveloper etc I get the 'right' output which is a properly formated xml document?? Am I missing something in the xsl or is this a quirk of the browser and its xsl 1.0 and transformer???

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="soap2.xsl"?>

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/03/addressing" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
    <soap:Header>
        <wsa:Action>http://www.sampleproject.com/webservice/BusinessServices/CreateWorkspaceResponse</wsa:Action>
        <wsa:MessageID>uuid:59e55139-1062-4f42-8509-d9218d76daeb</wsa:MessageID>
        <wsa:RelatesTo>uuid:2af90059-eb06-4762-8de8-c8ea72b0fc70</wsa:RelatesTo>
        <wsa:To>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/03/addressing/role/anonymous</wsa:To>
        <wsse:Security>
            <wsu:Timestamp wsu:Id="Timestamp-4e49cb36-9397-43a0-b62e-ddb2098abd43">
                <wsu:Created>2009-02-28T00:17:01Z</wsu:Created>
                <wsu:Expires>2009-02-28T00:22:01Z</wsu:Expires>
            </wsu:Timestamp>
        </wsse:Security>
    </soap:Header>
    <soap:Body>
        <CreateWorkspaceResponse xmlns="http://www.sampleproject.com/webservice/BusinessServices">
            <CreateWorkspaceResult>
                <![CDATA[<ep:Response xmlns:ep="www.sampleproject.com/response" success="True" timeStamp="20090228T12:17:01.000" >
<ep:Workspace id="d815952d-5f0b-4dd9-9a3a-5a067adb2914" lastModified="2/27/2009 4:17 PM" >
<ep:Title>SA_ProjCreate_WS_CusFld_0227</ep:Title>
<ep:WorkspaceType id="eba14bec-1be9-465b-af8b-2d9f7aff4b3e" >
<ep:Title>Full Service</ep:Title>
</ep:WorkspaceType>
<ep:field type="native" name="Summary" mayEdit="yes" ></ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="ApprovalStatus" mayEdit="no" >NotRequired</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="Budget" mayEdit="yes" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="CreatedOn" mayEdit="no" >2/27/2009</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="StartDate" mayEdit="yes" >2/27/2009</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="EndDate" mayEdit="yes" >3/10/2009</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="Health" mayEdit="yes" >OnPlan</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="Owner" mayEdit="no" >Suhel Ahmed</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="PercentComplete" mayEdit="no" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="Priority" mayEdit="yes" >Medium</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="Budget" mayEdit="no" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="TotalBudget" mayEdit="no" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="PlannedCostFromTasks" mayEdit="no" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="TotalActualCost" mayEdit="no" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="native" name="TotalMinutesWorked" mayEdit="no" >0</ep:field>
<ep:field type="custom" name="SalesForceID" mayEdit="yes" id="359e1a31-ebaa-4ef9-b540-1556c0a1b206" >666</ep:field>
<ep:field type="custom" name="Client" mayEdit="yes" id="d0d69a76-573e-4534-b135-826753ed60aa" ></ep:field>
<ep:field type="custom" name="Region" mayEdit="yes" id="a0d96369-ad6f-4096-b11e-151b508d2030" >GMI</ep:field>
<ep:field type="custom" name="ProductType" mayEdit="yes" id="2ece64e9-ecbc-46dc-8e7b-fe6ba81dfb39" ></ep:field>
</ep:Workspace>
</ep:Response>]]>
            </CreateWorkspaceResult>
        </CreateWorkspaceResponse>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

And the XSL

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    exclude-result-prefixes="xs" 
    version="1.0">
    
    <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" encoding="utf-8"></xsl:output>
    
    <xsl:template match="soap:Envelope">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="soap:Header"></xsl:apply-templates>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="soap:Body"></xsl:apply-templates>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="soap:Header">
        <xsl:copy-of select="."></xsl:copy-of>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="soap:Body">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="*"></xsl:apply-templates>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="*[namespace-uri()='http://www.sampleproject.com/webservice/BusinessServices' and local-name()='CreateWorkspaceResponse']">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="*"></xsl:apply-templates>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="*[namespace-uri()='http://www.sampleproject.com/webservice/BusinessServices' and local-name()='CreateWorkspaceResult']">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:value-of select="." disable-output-escaping="yes"></xsl:value-of>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Any ideas?

Martin Honnen · March 10th, 2009, 09:04 AM

Well if you transform XML to XML then a browser is not the right tool to look at the transformation result. IE, as far as I know, treats any transformation result as text/html and parses it with its HTML tag soup parser so it is not suprising that you only see text nodes of the result as that is the only thing it can recognize and render, the XML elements like SOAP elements are not something the HTML parser recognizes.

Mozilla/Firefox is better as it has support for rendering certain XML applications (e.g. XHTML or SVG) so you would certainly be able to transform XML to SVG for instance and have Mozilla render that SVG. But I am afraid your SOAP message is not something that Mozilla associates any defined rendering with so all you get to see is the text nodes. You could associate an CSS stylesheet with your transformation result to style the resulting XML, that is something that Mozilla should support.

I guess what you expect to happen is that the browsers do the same with the resulting XML that they do with static XML not associated with a stylesheet, namely rendering a pretty-printed document tree. But I don't know of any browser that does that. I am not sure why, maybe chaining the XSLT provided in the XML document with the default XSLT doing the pretty-printing is too complicated.

JohnBampton · March 10th, 2009, 09:35 AM

Thats what I thought, but a little bit less intellectually. :)

thanks.