XSLT with XPATH of the node to access the node value

Question

I am trying to extract the value of the messageIdentifier in the following XML request:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <ordersRequest> <requestHeader> <verb>get</verb> <transaction>OrderRequest</transaction> <version>1.0</version> <consumer>Web</consumer> <messageIdentifier>123456789</messageIdentifier> </requestHeader> </ordersRequest>

The intention is to pass the XPath information to the stylesheet so that the same XSL can be used for any other request (paymentRequest/requestHeader/messageIdentifier) and for any other node under requestHeader (paymentRequest/requestHeader/consumer). I came up with the following XSL for it:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes" /> <xsl:param name="xpath" select="/" /> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:value-of select="concat('/*/requestHeader/',$xpath)" /> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

The output here comes out as /*/requestHeader/messageIdentifier. When I apply the above stylesheet with the the following edit <xsl:value-of select="/*/messageHeader/messageIdentifier" /> , I get the value 123456789 in the output. Why is there a difference in the output. Please help.

What you need is to evaluate an XPath expression which is given as a string. As far as I know this is only possible in XSLT 3.0. What you could do is generate the XSLT using your XPath and then execute the generated XSLT. — Marcus Rickert
– Marcus Rickert, Commented Oct 12, 2014 at 14:29

Martin Honnen · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-12 15:43:24Z

For a simple child element selection you could use

<xsl:param name="element-name" select="'messageIdentifier'"/>

and then

<xsl:value-of select="/*/requestHeader/*[local-name() = $element-name]"/>

If you really want to execute XPath expressions dynamically then Marcus Rickert is right, you need XSLT 3.0 and xsl:evaluate or an extension function or element in earlier version which is then processor dependent or you need to generate XSLT code with one stylesheet and execute that in a second step.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

XSLT with XPATH of the node to access the node value

1 Answer 1

Comments

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Related