stable xslt code for pretty printing xml

anboss · October 27th, 2009, 01:16 PM

Hi,

Can somebody Please help me with a stable xslt code for pretty printing an xml.

Martin Honnen · October 27th, 2009, 01:25 PM

What is the format you want to create, HTML, PDF, something else? Do you want to use XSLT 1.0 or 2.0?
Are you aware that running XML through an XSLT stylesheet to pretty print it might lose information like XML declaration, DOCTYPE, CDATA sections?

mhkay · October 27th, 2009, 01:35 PM

Try:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet ...>

<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Or do you want something "prettier"?

anboss · October 27th, 2009, 04:58 PM

Dear Kay,
the simple xsl you suggested didnt work in the IBM datapower environment. the output turns out to be the same as the input xml without the proper format.

To answer Martin Honnen,

What is the format you want to create, HTML, PDF, something else?

my input to the xsl is not with proper indents. the output after pretty printing should also be a formatted xml.

Do you want to use XSLT 1.0 or 2.0?
2.0

Are you aware that running XML through an XSLT stylesheet to pretty print it might lose information like XML declaration, DOCTYPE, CDATA sections?

yes i need an xslt that will take an un-formatted xml as input and outputs a formatted one.

Martin Honnen · October 28th, 2009, 07:34 AM

I am not familiar with IBM datapower but the suggested stylesheet with xsl:output indent="yes" should do what you want, namely take an XML document without indentation as the input and output an indented document.
If that does not do what you want then you might want to ask in a forum specific to IBM datapower.

mhkay · October 28th, 2009, 07:51 AM

>the simple xsl you suggested didnt work in the IBM datapower environment. the output turns out to be the same as the input xml without the proper format.

Please don't tell me that something "didn't work". Tell me what output it produced and how this differed from the output you wanted. Otherwise I can't help you any further.

One thing to add is that it might be a good idea to strip existing whitespace as well

<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

Of course all of this assumes that you are dealing with an XML document where whitespace is not significant.