Extra white spaces in parsed XML?

vb89 · May 4th, 2010, 12:04 PM

I'm not sure why, but for what ever reason each XML that I parse has an extra blank white space at the end of each node.

Example:

Standard XML

Code:

<xml>
        <testing name="Bob" last_name="Johnson"/>
        <id number="00001"/>
         ...
</xml>

Parsed XML

Code:

<xml>
        <testing name="Bob" last_name="Johnson" />
        <id number="00001" />
         ...
</xml>

-- XSL

Code:

<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [
    <!ENTITY newline "<xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>">
    <!ENTITY nbsp "<xsl:text disable-output-escaping='yes'>&amp;nbsp;</xsl:text>">
    <!ENTITY lt "<xsl:text disable-output-escaping='yes'>&amp;lt;</xsl:text>">
]>

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="no" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
  <xsl:template>
     <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
  </template>  
</xsl:stylesheet>

Additional Details:
XSL Engine: NXSLT
XSLT version: 1.0

samjudson · May 4th, 2010, 12:08 PM

And....?

The "whitespace" you are referring to is irrelevant, so why do you have a problem with it being there?

Martin Honnen · May 4th, 2010, 12:10 PM

I don't know what NXSLT is but probably the serializer it uses has been written to serialize empty elements the way you describe. There is nothing wrong with that in terms of XML, on the other hand it is not necessary to do that with "normal" XML, only XHTML to be served as text/html would need that serialization.

vb89 · May 4th, 2010, 12:12 PM

While I realize that the whitespace is "irrelevant" to some people, I would prefer consistency between my documents. Additionally, this is something that I'd like to get to the bottom of just for the sake of understanding why it happens.

vb89 · May 4th, 2010, 12:20 PM

NXSLT is a command line utility that allows to perform XSL Transformations (XSLT) using .NET Framework's. NXSLT basically duplicates functionality and command line options, provided by Microsoft's MSXSL.EXE Command Line Transformation Utility.

Anyways...so you think this has to do with the XSL engine (NXSLT) or could it be something else? Is there any work around for this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Honnen

I don't know what NXSLT is but probably the serializer it uses has been written to serialize empty elements the way you describe. There is nothing wrong with that in terms of XML, on the other hand it is not necessary to do that with "normal" XML, only XHTML to be served as text/html would need that serialization.

Martin Honnen · May 4th, 2010, 12:31 PM

I doubt the XSLT processor or engine is some implementation other than Microsoft's .NET XslCompiledTransform (or maybe .NET's XslTransform if that is some old .NET 1.x code). And serialization in the .NET framework usually happens with some implementation of System.Xml.XmlWriter. Try some .NET code writing out an empty XML element with an XmlWriter implementation in the .NET framework and it probably produces that output. So you would need to override the relevant XmlWriter methods (WriteEndElement) with some wrapper or extension of an existing XmlWriter implementation to ensure you get the format you want and then make sure your XSLT transformation uses your custom XmlWriter. Whether that is possible with your command line tool I don't know, check whether it has an option to provide your own XmlWriter for serialization.