How to encapsulate element nodes?

vb89 · May 20th, 2010, 05:55 PM

****Note: title for this question should be...

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How to escape the commas in an element node in a CSV?
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I was wondering what the logic for encapsulating element nodes in an XSL is. Specifically, the XSL i wrote creates a CSV file and i'm trying to encapsulate all of the data elements in to double-quotes.

Using: XSLT 1.0, XPath 1.0

Source XML:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xml>
<main>
      <date year="2010" month="3" date="31" day="3"/>
      <time hour="10" minute="38" second="55" timezone="Central"/>
         <person first_name = "Bob" last_name = "Jackson">
          <contents>
               <content text="A very long sentence that will continue going for a very long time, possibly, it could be over a hundred words long and include multiple commas.../>
          </contents>
         </person>
        <person first_name = "David" last_name = "Lee">
          <contents>
               <content text="A very long sentence that will continue going for a very long time, possibly, it could be over a hundred words long and include multiple commas.../>
          </contents>
         </person>
</main>
</xml>

XSL

Code:

<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 match="/"> 
    
    <xsl:variable name="delim" select="','"/>

     <outputfile>TEST_FILE.CSV</outputfile>&newline;
    
	<xsl:for-each select="//person">
		<xPerson= concat('@first_name, '  ',@last_name')"/>

		<xsl:value-of select="concat($xPerson, $delim)"/>
		<xsl:for-each select="contents/content">
			<xsl:value-of select="concat(@text,&quot;$delim&quot;)"/>
		</xsl:for-each>
		
		&newline;
	</xsl:for-each>

          </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

The " above doesn't seem to be doing the trick.

Additionally, currently the XSL escapes from escaping ampersands (eg. when printing out a some thing like TEST&TEST... it outputs TEST&TEST). Is there a proper encoding that will allow this to happen automatically?

mrame · May 21st, 2010, 02:33 AM

Try with the below:

Code:

<xsl:output method="xml" indent="no" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/"> 
    
    <xsl:variable name="delim" select="','"/>
 <xsl:variable name="quot">"</xsl:variable>
     <outputfile>TEST_FILE.CSV</outputfile>
    
 <xsl:for-each select="//person">
  <xsl:variable name="xPerson" select="concat(@first_name, '  ',@last_name)"/>
  <xsl:value-of select="concat($xPerson, $delim)"/>
  <xsl:for-each select="contents/content">
   <xsl:value-of select='concat(@text,$quot,$delim,$quot)'/>
  </xsl:for-each>
  
  
 </xsl:for-each>
          </xsl:template>

Hope the above would help.

vb89 · May 24th, 2010, 11:20 AM

So I found a custom built function that will do what I need -- I think

Code:

    <xsl:template name="display_csv_field">
       <xsl:param name="field"/>
		   <xsl:choose>
				 <xsl:when test="contains($field, ',' )">
					 <xsl:text>"</xsl:text>
					 <xsl:value-of select="$field"/>
					<xsl:text>"</xsl:text>
				 </xsl:when>
				<xsl:otherwise>
					<xsl:value-of select="$field" />
				 </xsl:otherwise>
		</xsl:choose>
	</xsl:template>

However, i'm not very familiar with using templates, can someone please help me apply the template above to my existing XSL. I want to apply the above function to each instance of the content element-node in the XML.

Thanks!