Hi XSLT Geniuses, I am trying to do a conditional replace in XSLT but dont seem to get it right.

I am trying something like
If condition1 replace ($x, $a)
else If condition1 replace ($x, $b) and so on.

To make the problem more trickier, i have to run this into a loop and should not override the changes made from first iteration, i.e.

if condition1 matches, i need to store the result in a temp and use that as the stringToBeReplaced in condition2.

Is this doable in XSLT ( Using SAXON)?

Note: I am looking for a function similar to functx_replace-multi, but just that my changeFrom and changeTo are dynamic and for some reason when using this function i get the output as the input string itself.

You can't create temporary variables in XSLT, so from your description above which describes the solution in a procedural manner it is hard to work out how you should do it in XSLT, which is a functional language.

Perhaps if you could give us some examples of your input and your expected output and describe the rules for the transformation then we might be able to help more.

__________________
/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/

Think before you post: What have you tried?

Input will be like
<Input>
<A Id="1">
<A1 Id="1.1">Value</A1>
</A>
<B Id="2">Y</B>
<C Id="3">Select(A[Id=1]/A1[Id=1.1])</C>
<D Id="4">D</D>
<E Id="5">E</E>
<F Id="6">Select(D[Id=4]) and Select(E[Id=5])</F>
</Input>

Output needs to be:
<Output>
<A Id="1">
<A1 Id="1.1">Value</A1>
</A>
<B Id="2">Y</B>
<C Id="3">Value</C>
<D Id="4">D</D>
<E Id="5">E</E>
<F Id="6">D and E</F>
</Output>

As i said earlier, i find transforming F trickier, cos i do a xpath evaluation and obtain the required result, but not able to replace it.

A very strange requirement and I'm really not sure I understand it fully. But it will need saxon:evaluate() (or the new xsl:evaluate instruction in XSLT 3.0) to evaluate the XPath expressions dynamically, and it will need recursion so that the processing of each input element is applied to the result of processing the previous element.

__________________
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer\'s Reference

Thanks Kay.

To make things easier, the least i can do is generate all elements with the same name as,

<Input>
<A Id="1">
<A1 Id="1.1">Value</A1>
</A>
<A Id="2">Y</A>
<A Id="3">Select(A[Id=1]/A1[Id=1.1])</A>
<A Id="4">D</A>
<A Id="5">E</A>
<A Id="6">Select(A[Id=4]) and Select(A[Id=5])</F>
</Input>

I am able to retrieve the XPATH values by using plain xsl itself (something like storing the root into a variable and retrieving as $root//A[<dynamic>]//A1[<dynamic>]).

The main problem is when there are two selects (like in <A Id = 6>), I am not able to determine which XPATH value goes where.

Any help is appreciated.

Is "Select(A[Id=1]/A1[Id=1.1])" supposed to an XPath expression selecting nodes in the input sample? I don't see how it selects anything, I think you need "A[@Id = 1]/A1[@Id = 1.1]" as your input has "Id" attributes and not "Id" elements.

__________________
Martin Honnen
Microsoft MVP (XML, Data Platform Development) 2005/04 - 2013/03
My blog

Martin, I have provided just the inout XML. I convert this XML to the format you have specified using concat and other functions. I am stuck in replacing the string after obtaining the XPATH value.

If you are stuck with a specific part of the code and need help solving it then we need to see the specific code, together with an explanation of its input, what it is supposed to to, the current output and the desired output.

__________________
Martin Honnen
Microsoft MVP (XML, Data Platform Development) 2005/04 - 2013/03
My blog

So here is where I am with this change.

I was able separately create a sequence of string to be replaced and sequence of replacement string.

$selectValue is the incoming string for each iteration.

All I need to do is get the following code to work,

<xsl:variable name="some" select="for $m in tokenize($selectValue,'Select')
return if (contains($m,'Id'))
then replace($selectValue in first iteration (the string created in the previous iteration for alll rest),$toBeReplacedString[position() <not working>]),$replacementString[position() <not working>]) else concat($selectValue,.)"/>
<xsl:value-of select="$some" />

Can i assume this cannot be done using XSLT?