XSLT Stylesheet test for special character

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posted 16 years ago

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Hi All,

I need some assistance to compare a string value of an node before deciding on what child element/attribute to extract from. Here are the detail as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
  <!DOCTYPE html (View Source for full doctype...)> 
- <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
- <head>
- <body 
   .......
- ><div id="container">
+ <div id="header">
  <div id="postmark" /> 
- <div id="content">
+ <div id="as1">
  ....... 
  <h1>Employee Detail</h1> 
- <p>
  <strong>Firstname:</strong> 
  <a   rel="nofollow">John</a> 
  </p>
- <p>
  <strong>Surname:</strong> 
  <a   rel="nofollow">Smith</a> 
  </p>
- <p>
  <strong>Date of birth:</strong> 
  12/01/1932 
  </p>
- <p>
  <strong>Sex:</strong> 
  M 
  </p>
- <p>
  <strong>Interest:</strong> 
  <br  /> 
  Tennis 
  <br  /> 
  Movie
  <br  /> 
.....

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:ns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
exclude-result-prefixes="ns">

( 1 ) <xsl:template match="/">
( 2 ) <employee>
( 3 )   <xsl:for-each select="/ns:html/ns:body/ns:div[@id='content']/ns:p">
( 4 )     <xsl:value-of select="ns:strong"/>
( 5 )     <xsl:choose>
( 6 )  	  <xsl:when test="Firstname:">
( 7 )          <firstname><xsl:value-of select="."/></firstname>
( 8 )        </xsl:when>
( 9 )  	  <xsl:otherwise>
( 10 )        <firstname>Unknown</firstname>
( 11 )	  </xsl:otherwise>  
( 12 )	</xsl:choose>
( 13 )  </xsl:for-each>
( 14 ) </employee>
( 15 ) </xsl:template>
( 17 ) 
( 18 ) </xsl:stylesheet>

I have no problem with test="Firstname" (line 6) but the ":" appears to be a special character that needs additional syntax (possible escape character) to pick up "Firstname:" together.

The error message has something like: Invalid QName on line 6 of stylesheet.

Your assistance would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Jack

Gamini Sirisena

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posted 16 years ago

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Did you try using
Firstname" ?

Paul Clapham

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posted 16 years ago

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That simply attempts to test if there is a child which is a "Firstname:" element. Of course there can't be one because that's not a valid name for an XML element. Start by describing the actual test which you want to do. Then write an XPath expression for that test. (Post the description here if you can't proceed.)

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Jack Bush

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posted 16 years ago

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Hi Paul & Gamini,

I managed to get it working using test="contains(.,'Firstname:')".

The test="Firstname"" spat the dummy.

Thanks for trying anyway,

Jack

Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.