Remove non-number parts of string

fixit · October 15th, 2009, 12:01 PM

I have one element that should only contain numbers. Occassionaly, however users input dashes and other characters. How can I remove any characters that are not numbers.? Also the first character must be a number. THanks.

12-13 --> 12

12 - 13 --> 12

12,13 --> 12

n/a --> NULL

Martin Honnen · October 15th, 2009, 12:09 PM

Do you use XSLT 2.0 or 1.0? With 2.0 you have regular expressions and the replace function http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#func-replace to solve such problems.

fixit · October 15th, 2009, 12:13 PM

We are using 1.0.

Martin Honnen · October 15th, 2009, 12:22 PM

In that case, do you know whether your XSLT 1.0 processor supports extension functions like http://www.exslt.org/regexp/index.html?

mhkay · October 15th, 2009, 12:59 PM

There's a neat solution that works in 1.0:

translate($input, translate($input, '0123456789', ''), '')

The inner translate returns all characters present in the string that are not digits; the outer translate removes these characters from the string.