I have seen lots of posts that do something like this and that makes me feel like this is possible and I am just doing something wrong. I have simplified it as much as possible to try and figure out why this is happening:
Heres my xml (nothing very exciting):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<REPORT>
</REPORT>
Here is my xsl:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<xsl:template match="REPORT">
<xsl:variable name="tryThisTemplate">
<xsl:call-template name="TRY_THIS"/>
</xsl:variable>
<TEST1>
<xsl:call-template name="TRY_THIS"/>
</TEST1>
<TEST2>
<xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="$tryThisTemplate" />
</TEST2>
<TEST3>
<xsl:value-of select="$tryThisTemplate" />
</TEST3>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="TRY_THIS">
<MY_NODE desc="my description" />
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Here is my result:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TEST1>
<MY_NODE desc="my description"/>
</TEST1>
<TEST2></TEST2>
<TEST3></TEST3>
Here is my question:
How come TEST2 and TEST3 don't work. The $tryThisTemplate variable appears to be blank. Am I misunderstanding something here. Should I be doing this in a different way?
Here is the correct way to do this (note that DOE is not necessary and should be avoided):
<xsl:stylesheet
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="REPORT">
<xsl:variable name="tryThisTemplate">
<xsl:call-template name="TRY_THIS"/>
</xsl:variable>
<TEST1>
<xsl:call-template name="TRY_THIS"/>
</TEST1>
<TEST2>
<xsl:copy-of select="$tryThisTemplate" />
</TEST2>
<TEST3>
<xsl:copy-of select="$tryThisTemplate" />
</TEST3>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="TRY_THIS">
<MY_NODE desc="my description" />
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
when this transformation is applied on the provided XML document:
<REPORT>
</REPORT>
the wanted result is produced:
<TEST1>
<MY_NODE desc="my description"/>
</TEST1>
<TEST2>
<MY_NODE desc="my description"/>
</TEST2>
<TEST3>
<MY_NODE desc="my description"/>
</TEST3>
Explanation: <xsl:copy-of>
copies (as its name says) nodes. <xsl:value-of>
outputs the string value of whatever is in its select
attribute. The string value of an element is the concatenation (in document order) of all of its text-node descendents. In your case the element has no text-node descendents and thus <xsl:value-of>
outputs nothing.
Yes there is a misunderstanding here. If you are trying to copy the structure of $tryThisTemplate
to the output, you need to use <xsl:copy-of>
instead of <xsl:value-of>
. <xsl:value-of>
outputs the string value of its select argument, that is, its text content, which in this case is an empty string.
The $tryThisTemplate variable appears to be blank
The variable it's not blank, but with xsl:value-of
you are asking for the text nodes inside that. That's "blank".
For instance, try with:
<TEST3>
<xsl:copy-of select="$tryThisTemplate" />
</TEST3>
And you'll see magically appear MY_NODE
between TEST3
:))
check out my solution
here is my template (was veriable content)
<xsl:template name="author-name" match="string-name">
<xsl:if test="fn[string-length(normalize-space()) > 0] or given-names[string-length(normalize-space()) > 0]">
<xsl:apply-templates select="fn | given-names" mode="ascii"/>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="sn[string-length(normalize-space()) > 0] or surname[string-length(normalize-space()) > 0]">
<xsl:text> </xsl:text><xsl:apply-templates select="sn | surname" mode="ascii"/>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="sn[string-length(normalize-space()) > 0] or suffix[string-length(normalize-space()) > 0]">
<xsl:text> </xsl:text><xsl:apply-templates select="sn | suffix" mode="ascii"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
and when I use it in any other template simply I just call it like this
<xsl:template match="string-name">
<xsl:variable name="author">
<xsl:call-template name="author-name"/> <!--here is the tricky part-->
</xsl:variable>
<span class="NLM_{name()}">
<xsl:copy-of select="@id" />
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space($author)" />
</span>
</xsl:template>
hope this helps you