Question

Search & replace in XSLT 1.0

Asked by: spule

Hello,

I have created a template that matches all text nodes in my document (match="text()"). I want this template to perform some search and replace on the text. For example, I want to replace all occurences of " --" with " –" and all occurences of "..." with "…" and so on. What is the easiest way of doing this?

Thank you.

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Asked On: 2009-10-18 at 07:23:46ID24821667
Tags: xml
,; xsl transformations
,; xslt
,; search
,; replace
Topics: Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)
,; Extensible Markup Language (XML)
,; XPath
Participating Experts: 1
Points: 500
Comments: 18

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Answers

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-19 at 12:17:56ID: 25608096

Hey, XSLT (and specially XSLT1) is not really meant for advanced text processing

Here is a template that calls itself (recursively) that replaces a string with another string in a text() node

        <xsl:template name="replace-str">
            <xsl:param name="str"/>
            <xsl:param name="find"/>
            <xsl:param name="replace"/>
            <xsl:choose>
                <xsl:when test="contains($str, $find)">
                    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($str, $find)"/>
                    <xsl:value-of select="$replace"/>
                    <xsl:call-template name="replace-str">
                        <xsl:with-param name="str" select="substring-after($str, $find)"/>
                        <xsl:with-param name="find" select="$find"/>
                        <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="$replace"/>
                    </xsl:call-template>
                </xsl:when>
                <xsl:otherwise>
                    <xsl:value-of select="$str"/>
                </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:template>

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by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-19 at 12:29:55ID: 25608202

An example of its use
(I used #133 instead of hellip... it comes out the same if you serialise as html, but it saves me from having to add Entity declarations to teh XSLT)

        <xsl:template match="text()">
            <xsl:call-template name="replace-str">
                <xsl:with-param name="str" select="."/>
                <xsl:with-param name="find" select="'...'"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="'&#133;'"></xsl:with-param>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:template>

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by: spulePosted on 2009-10-19 at 12:41:57ID: 25608280

Thanks. But If I want to replace multiple things, I will have to call that template inside the parameter of another template call, which is also inside a parameter of another template call. Can this be somehow simplified?

I would really like to use XSLT 2.0 but I can't find a library that I could use from PHP.
Maybe I could do some processing in PHP and some processing in XSLT?

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-19 at 12:43:17ID: 25608289

Here is how to use a sequence op text replacements in a full template

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="html" encoding="ISO-8859-1"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="text()">
            <xsl:variable name="step1">
                <xsl:call-template name="replace-str">
                    <xsl:with-param name="str" select="."/>
                    <xsl:with-param name="find" select="'...'"/>
                    <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="'&#x2026;'"></xsl:with-param>
                </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:variable>
            <xsl:call-template name="replace-str">
                <xsl:with-param name="str" select="$step1"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="find" select="'--'"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="'&#160;&#8211;'"></xsl:with-param>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:template>
        <xsl:template name="replace-str">
            <xsl:param name="str"/>
            <xsl:param name="find"/>
            <xsl:param name="replace"/>
            <xsl:choose>
                <xsl:when test="contains($str, $find)">
                    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($str, $find)"/>
                    <xsl:value-of select="$replace"/>
                    <xsl:call-template name="replace-str">
                        <xsl:with-param name="str" select="substring-after($str, $find)"/>
                        <xsl:with-param name="find" select="$find"/>
                        <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="$replace"/>
                    </xsl:call-template>
                </xsl:when>
                <xsl:otherwise>
                    <xsl:value-of select="$str"/>
                </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

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by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-19 at 13:14:30ID: 25608577

As you see this is clumsy.
Preprocessing in PHP would not hurt
Please make sure that you don't render your XML invalid

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-19 at 13:15:31ID: 25608591

Another possibility is to put the mappings in an XML and process that as a lookup table recursively.
That is a bit more demanding, but cleaner code it will definitely be

by: spulePosted on 2009-10-20 at 12:57:44ID: 25617899

What do you mean by your last comment? I don't quite understand it.

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-20 at 13:14:22ID: 25618060

<terms>
<term find="..." replace="…"/>
<term find="--" replace=" –"/>
</terms>

now, find a way to automate reading that XML (using document() eg.
and for each term take the result of the previous step and make another replace,
this will give you much nicer code than teh nested call-templates or stuffing each result in a variable

It will be more flexible if you need to ad a term for replacement

by: spulePosted on 2009-10-21 at 08:00:56ID: 25624627

Hello. Thanks for your help.

I tried this:

<xsl:variable name="replace-rules" xmlns:r="http://ondra.cifka.com/xmlns/2009/website/replace">
<r:rule>
<r:find> ---</r:find>
<r:replace> —</r:replace>
</r:rule>
<r:rule>
<r:find>---</r:find>
<r:replace>—</r:replace>
</r:rule>
<r:rule>
<r:find> --</r:find>
<r:replace> –</r:replace>
</r:rule>
<r:rule>
<r:find>--</r:find>
<r:replace>–</r:replace>
</r:rule>
<r:rule>
<r:find>...</r:find>
<r:replace>…</r:replace>
</r:rule>
</xsl:variable>

Then I want to for-each through this variable:

<xsl:template match="text()">
<xsl:for-each select="$replace-rules/r:rule" xmlns:r="http://ondra.cifka.com/xmlns/2009/website/replace">
<xsl:value-of select="r:find" />
<xsl:value-of select="r:replace" />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

And I get this error:
Chyba pYi kontrole typu výrazu 'FilterParentPath(variable-ref(replace-rules/result-tree), step("child", 33))'.

(Error checking expression type)

What's going on?

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-21 at 08:15:30ID: 25624790

Sorry to say, but my slovak language knowledge is a bit "not helping" for understanding the error message :-)

Anyway, what you are trying to do will only work in XSLT2 or with a nodeset extension in XSLT1.
Each processor has its own nodeset extension, so you will need to tell me which processor you are using,
I usually put that as plain XML in my XSLT and use document('')/r:rule to address them
(document('') points inside the XSLT

Your for-each will not work because you can not pass the result from the previous step in,
remeber that variables don't vary in XSLT
so you will need recursion

please note that you need an entity declaration in your stylesheet to be able to use the entities

I now have to go, but I can help you getting started later

by: spulePosted on 2009-10-22 at 06:47:20ID: 25634097

Thank you.

I am using PHP's XSLTProcessor. Is there anything else I can find out about it?

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-22 at 06:49:29ID: 25634118

what version of PHP are you using?

by: spulePosted on 2009-10-22 at 06:51:55ID: 25634149

I'm using PHP 5.1.6.

by: GertonePosted on 2009-10-22 at 07:00:41ID: 25634258

OK, I will see what I can do later today or tomorow

by: spulePosted on 2009-10-27 at 09:56:46ID: 25674709

No more ideas? Please help me.

by: spulePosted on 2009-11-17 at 13:05:19ID: 25844163

Finally I came up with this. Is it a reasonable solution?
The page is generated in about 20 milliseconds. It that acceptable?

    <r:replace-rules>
        <r:rule>
            <r:find> ---</r:find>
            <r:replace>&nbsp;&mdash;</r:replace>
        </r:rule>
        <r:rule>
            <r:find>---</r:find>
            <r:replace>&mdash;</r:replace>
        </r:rule>
        <r:rule>
            <r:find> --</r:find>
            <r:replace>&nbsp;&ndash;</r:replace>
        </r:rule>
        <r:rule>
            <r:find>--</r:find>
            <r:replace>&ndash;</r:replace>
        </r:rule>
        <r:rule>
            <r:find>...</r:find>
            <r:replace>&hellip;</r:replace>
        </r:rule>
    </r:replace-rules>
 
    <xsl:template name="processText">
        <xsl:param name="text" />
        <xsl:apply-templates select="document('')/xsl:stylesheet/r:replace-rules/r:rule[1]">
            <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text" />
        </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:template>
 
    <xsl:template match="r:rule">
        <xsl:param name="text" />
        <xsl:variable name="processedText">
            <xsl:call-template name="strReplace">
                <xsl:with-param name="haystack" select="$text"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="needle" select="r:find"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="r:replace"/>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:variable>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="following-sibling::*[1]">
                <xsl:apply-templates select="following-sibling::*[1]">
                    <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$processedText"/>
                </xsl:apply-templates>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:value-of select="$processedText"/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
 
    <xsl:template name="strReplace">
      <xsl:param name="haystack"/>
      <xsl:param name="needle"/>
      <xsl:param name="replace"/>
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="contains($haystack,$needle)">
          <xsl:value-of select="concat(substring-before($haystack,$needle),$replace)"/>
          <xsl:call-template name="strReplace">
            <xsl:with-param name="haystack" select="substring-after($haystack,$needle)"/>
            <xsl:with-param name="needle" select="$needle"/>
            <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="$replace"/>
          </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <xsl:value-of select="$haystack"/>
        </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>

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by: GertonePosted on 2009-11-17 at 13:59:50ID: 25844691

seems more or less what I had in mind yes (sorry for not developing it through)
If it does what you want in about 20 milliseconds, don't hesitate it is the way to go

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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Search & replace in XSLT 1.0

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