On Tuesday 12 March 2002 02:29, Hugo Ferreira wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This may be a little off topic, but can anyone tell me how I may do the
> following:
> I would like to obtain a node's text value. If the value is "" the I would
> like to output
> NULL otherwise I would like to use the node's value.
>
> So far I have:
>
> <xsl:variable name="sa">
> <xsl:if test="not(string(sales_agent))">NULL</xsl:if>
> <xsl:if test="string(sales_agent)"><xsl:value-of
> select="sales_agent"/></xsl:if>
> </xsl:variable>
>
First of all, you should use <xsl:choose> instead of two <xsl:if>'s here (not
really a problem, but it looks prettier and is more efficient):
<xsl:variable name="sa">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not(string(sales_agent))">NULL</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="sales_agent"/></xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
> But how may I output the variable's value? It seems I can only do this as
> an element attribute.
I'm not sure what the problem is. You just do:
<xsl:value-of select="$sa"/>
Or, if you want to use it as the value of an element's attribute, do
something like
<theElement someAttribute="{$sa}">...</theElement>
If you are outputting as an attribute, if you want you can also skip the
variable and output the attribute like this:
<theElement>
<xsl:attribute name="someAttribute">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not(string(sales_agent))">NULL</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="sales_agent"/></xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:attribute>
... other stuff inside theELement ...
</theElement>
You can use xsl:attribute to dynamically create an attribute in any element,
so long as xsl:attribute is the first thing in that element other than
whitespace. You can even dynamically change the name of the attribute using
<xsl:attribute name="{$theName}">.
Hope that helps, let me know if I was confused by your question.
>
> BTW, can anyone point me to a mailing list were such questions may be
> answered?
xsl-list seems to be the most popular, and you can usually get your questions
answered within an hour or less. Lots of smart people hang out there,
including a lot of the people who are actually responsible for XSLT. Go to
http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list/subscribe-unsubscribe.html
>
> TIA.
> Hugo.
--
Peter Davis
"I DO want your money, because god wants your money!"
-- The Reverend Jimmy, from _Repo_Man_
