Transforming XML to JSON with custom XSLT looses c

Question

I've got a .NET library that uses an XSLT file for transforming beer xml files into json for a web app.

The XSLT file looks a lot like this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
<xsl:template match="RECIPES">
{
    {
      "description": {
      "name": "<xsl:value-of select="NAME"/>",
      "style": "<xsl:value-of select="STYLE/NAME"/>",
      ...

And I'm converting using this piece of code in c#:

using(var writer = new StringWriter()){
     _xsltCompiler.Transform(_document, null, writer);
     json = writer.ToString();
}

Now, the problem is that curly braces and whitespace is missing from the output. And it used to work. From the source control history I can see no aparent changes lately. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Answer 1

I would recommend transforming it initially to xml and storing it into a variable then applying a standard/general template to transform that to JSON. I would this this slightly different using XSLT 2.0 or 3.0 and implement xml-to-json().

This is my solution to the example above:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
      xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
      <xsl:output method="text" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
      <xsl:template match="RECIPES">
            <xsl:variable name="xml">
                  <description>
                        <xsl:element name="name">
                              <xsl:value-of select="NAME"/>
                        </xsl:element>
                        <xsl:element name="style">
                              <xsl:value-of select="STYLE/NAME"/>
                        </xsl:element>
                  </description>
            </xsl:variable>

            {<xsl:apply-templates select="$xml" mode="xml-to-json"/>}

      </xsl:template>



      <!-- Object or Element Property-->
      <xsl:template match="*" mode="xml-to-json">
            "<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>" :
            <xsl:call-template name="Properties">
                  <xsl:with-param name="parent" select="'Yes'"></xsl:with-param>
            </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:template>

      <!-- Array Element -->
      <xsl:template match="*" mode="ArrayElement">
            <xsl:call-template name="Properties"/>
      </xsl:template>

      <!-- Object Properties -->
      <xsl:template name="Properties">
            <xsl:param name="parent"></xsl:param>
            <xsl:variable name="childName" select="name(*[1])"/>
            <xsl:choose>
                  <xsl:when test="not(*|@*)">
                        <xsl:choose>
                              <xsl:when test="$parent='Yes'">
                                    <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
                                    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
                                    <xsl:text>&quot;</xsl:text>
                              </xsl:when>
                              <xsl:otherwise>"<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>":"<xsl:value-of select="."/>"</xsl:otherwise>
                        </xsl:choose>
                  </xsl:when>
                  <xsl:when test="count(*[name()=$childName]) > 1">{ "<xsl:value-of select="$childName"/>" :[<xsl:apply-templates select="*" mode="ArrayElement"/>] }</xsl:when>
                  <xsl:otherwise>{<xsl:apply-templates select="@*" mode="xml-to-json"/><xsl:apply-templates select="*" mode="xml-to-json"/>}</xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
            <xsl:if test="following-sibling::*">,</xsl:if>
      </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>