Variables and the 'to' construct

mphare · February 25th, 2011, 12:15 PM

Using Saxon 9 in Win 7/64

I have a simple enough XML

Code:

<xsl:variable name="myData">
<AAA>ABC<BBB><CCC>1</CCC><DDD>5</DDD></BBB>XYZ</AAA>
</xsl:variable>

I want to process this so I call a template

Code:

<xsl:call-template name="myTemplate">
<xsl:with-param name="myData" select="$myData">
</xsl:call-template>

My template is

Code:

<xsl:template name="myTemplate">
<xsl:param name="myData"/>


<xsl:for-each select="$myData//BBB/CCC to $myData//BBB/DDD">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>

What I expected to see are the numbers 1 2 3 4 5, which I do get.

But, I get is an error message:

Quote:

Validate error at xsl:for-each on line (line #) of file (filename)
FORG0001: Cannot convert zero-length string to an integer
Transformatin failed: Run-time errors were reported

What zero-length string are we talking about here?

Thanks,

- m

samjudson · February 25th, 2011, 12:21 PM

It outputs 12345 when I run it on Saxon 9.1.0.2.

I suspect one or more of your $myData variables is out of scope, so not being passed into the template correctly perhaps?

mphare · February 25th, 2011, 12:25 PM

This is why I love this forum. It's like talking to a therapist. As soon a you post, you begin to discover the cure.

I added text() to the end of the select items for the for-each statement

Code:

<xsl:for-each select="$myData//BBB//C/text() to $myData//BBB//DDD/text()">

and that has fixed the issue.

I'm not sure why it silenced the error message as I still get my 1 2 3 4 5 I was expecting.

Thanks for the venue! It really helps!

mphare · February 25th, 2011, 12:26 PM

Thanks, Sam. I posted before I saw your response.
I get 1 2 3 4 5 in the first version, I just also get the error message.

Adding text() to the select statement silenced the error message, but I don't know why.

Thanks!

mhkay · February 25th, 2011, 02:08 PM

I can't see any reason why adding /text() should make a difference. However, you also changed the element name from CCC to C. There's no way C in a path expression will match CCC in your data, so you're not telling us the whole truth...

mphare · February 25th, 2011, 03:00 PM

I agree, C was a typo, I meant CCC
But I do believe I'm leaving out some important point, but I don't know what it is.

I distilled the XML/XSLT down to something I could easily post, in reality there is more going on. Namepsaces, for example. I have to contend with a few namespaces when I'm doing the transformation. When I create $myData, it is in a namespace: xmlns="http://software/nmitl1", so when I define myTemplate, I give it xpath-default-namespace="http://software/nmitl1". That alone caused me much grief until I remembered I had to deal with the namespace issue.

The call to myTemplate actually happens inside another template

Code:

<xsl:template name="myOtherTemplate" xpath-default-namepsace="http://software/nmitl1">
<xsl:param name="myData"/>

<xsl:if test="exists($myData//BBB)">
<xsl:call-template name="myTemplate">
<xsl:with-param name="myData" select="$myData"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>

</xsl:template>

I didn't think this was important since it essentially just passes myData through to myTemplate. Eventually, more processing will go on in this template.

The way I set the values for CCC and DDD are also a bit convoluted.
I have to follow a cross reference to other parts of the input document to find the values for CCC and DDD. These are stored in a temporary result and xpath'd out later to fill in CCC and DDD using something like

Code:

<xsl:variable name="myData">
<AAA>ABC<BBB>
<CCC><xsl:value-of select="$tmpData//tmpCCC"/></CCC>
<DDD><xsl:value-of select="$tmpData//tmpDDD"/></DDD>
</BBB>XYZ</AAA>

When I call to myOtherTemplate, I do it in a variable as I am wanting to capture the output in a temporary result for later use.

Code:

<xsl:variable name="myResult">
<RESULT>
<xsl:call-template name="myOtherTemplate">
<xsl:with-param name="myData" select="$myData"/>
</call-template>
</RESULT>
</xsl:variable>

I wasn't trying to leave important stuff out, I was just trying to distill the problem down to, what I thought was, a minimal series of events.

Thanks again!

mphare · February 25th, 2011, 03:31 PM

It has something to do with the way I'm filling in the CCC and DDD elements.
If I just put numbers in there, like 3 and 7, then the templates work without the text() elements.

Wished I would have thought to try that before posting here. But, like I said, this place is therapeutic and helps to clear thoughts when writing them down.

I may be back asking for help on the reference following.

Thanks again!

mhkay · February 26th, 2011, 05:19 AM

>I was just trying to distill the problem down to, what I thought was, a minimal series of events.

Yes, I know. When you spend a lot of time answering questions, typos like that are a very good clue that you're not seeing the real data but some abstraction of it. Abstracting and simplifying the problem is a good thing to do: but you should always simplify it to something that is self-contained, complete, and demonstrates the problem. The test is: could the reader reproduce the problem from the information given? If there's a typo, it means the code being posted probably hasn't been executed at all, which means that looking for bugs in it is a waste of time.