XML as param to XSLT

imshriram · December 12th, 2011, 03:53 PM

Hi All,
I am using Saxon 6. I have a created a XML as string in java and need this as a param in my XSL. Since this is on Saxon 6, I am unable to use saxon:parse (which is introduced in saxon 7).

What is the equivalent on saxon 6? Or how do i recreate the same functionality?

I tried passing the XML as string, stream source, stream result etc. In all theses cases (except String),when i print the value of the param I get the toString() of the object instead of the XML.

Any help is appreciated.

mhkay · December 12th, 2011, 07:29 PM

First point: why are you sticking with Saxon 6? There are few good reasons for doing this.

Second point: you have to parse the lexical XML to a tree in the Java code, and then pass the resulting node (root of the tree) to Saxon.

imshriram · December 13th, 2011, 12:05 AM

Thanks Kay.

To your first point, Are you saying that there are good reasons to stay with Saxon6? We are considering an upgrade to 8 but not in the next four months.

I tried your solution. My code looks something like this:

Code:

DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
org.w3c.dom.Document document = builder.parse(new InputSource(new StringReader(result1.getWriter().toString())));
transformer2.setParameter("param11", document.getDocumentElement());

and in my XSL,

Code:

<xsl:param name="param11" />
<xsl:template match="/">
     <xsl:message><xsl:value-of select="concat('name: ',$param11/Root/@Name)" /></xsl:message>
</xsl:template>

But this gives me the following errror:
Error at xsl:value-of on line 10 of file:/Data.xsl:
The value is not a node-set
javax.xml.transform.TransformerException: The value is not a node-set
at com.icl.saxon.style.StyleElement.styleError(StyleE lement.java:818)
at com.icl.saxon.style.StyleElement.processChildren(S tyleElement.java:645)
at com.icl.saxon.style.XSLMessage.process(XSLMessage. java:87)

I also tried using exslt:node-set() around the param, but got a similar error(exslt:node-set(): argument must be a node-set or tree)

Can you please tell me where i am going wrong?

mhkay · December 13th, 2011, 06:12 AM

>Are you saying that there are good reasons to stay with Saxon6?

On the contrary, I said there are very few good reasons to stay with Saxon6. About the only one I can think of is that your system works OK, meets all its requirements, and you have no need to make any changes.

>The value is not a node-set

I'm sorry, but Saxon6 is so long ago that I have no memory of what the rules are for passing parameters to a stylesheet - I would have to look it up in the documentation, which you can do equally well yourself.

Generally though (and this remains true with Saxon today) it's not a good idea to construct a DOM just for Saxon to use it. It's much better to let Saxon construct the tree itself, in its own optimized format. Instead of passing a DOM node as the stylesheet parameter, pass a URI, and within the stylesheet, call the document() function on that URI; or if you are starting from lexical XML in a string, use the Saxon APIs to construct a TinyTree.

imshriram · December 13th, 2011, 01:40 PM

Thanks Kay, as per your advice, we are writing the java output ina file and reading it as a document() in the XSL.