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XSLT URI string manipulation

I do some string manipulation on a XML field (cs-uri-stem) and display the results thus:

<xsl:variable name="hno" select="substring-before( substring-after(substring-after( substring-after( substring-after(substring-after( substring-after( cs-uri-stem , '/') , '/') , '/') , '/') , '/'), '/'), '/') "/>
<xsl:value-of select='translate($hno,"-","/")' />

Sometimes the string is not in the correct format (seven slashes), and in this case nothing is displayed.

Seeing as though I am manipulating a URI string and I only want the last part of it, is there a better way of stripping out the preceding part of the string rather than using substring-before?

At worst, is there a way of doing an if-then-else type of operation that will display the contents of cs-uri-stem is the variable $hno is empty?

Thanks.

rdcpro

Well, you could test for the slashes with an xsl:choose structure, using contains(nodeName, '/') as the test.

If you can use extensions, you could create a regular expression extension function to do this. If not, then I'd recursively process each character in the string, doing whatever I needed to do. Here's an example:

http://rdcpro.com/Members/rdcpro/snippets/textparser/

Regards,
Mike Sharp

colly92002

ASKER

Thanks. I'm sure you have answered this for me before!

I shall look into this next week (on holiday now).

colly92002

ASKER

Hello again.

Your example hasn't really helped me I'm afraid, its doing what I want to do in reverse, and rather thatn trying to re-code it, I think I would rather learn about extensions.

I have had a quick look at www.exslt.org and the match extensions seems to be what I am looking for. However, I cannot get it to work on my server (maily due to me rushing in feet first and not learning what I have to do).

Can you point me in the direction of a good tutorial for creating/using extensions?

Here is how I have tried to include the extension:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions"
xmlns:regexp="http://exslt.org/regular-expressions"
extension-element-prefixes="regexp"
>
<func:script implements-prefix="regexp"
language="exslt:javascript"
src="regexp.xslt" />

When I use it:
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="function-available('regexp:match')">
<TD class="char">
<xsl:for-each select="regexp:match('This is a test string', '(\w+)', 'g'">
Part <xsl:value-of select="position()" /> = <xsl:value-of select="." />
</xsl:for-each>
</TD>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>

I get:

msxml3.dll error '80004005'

Expression expected. regexp:match('This is a test string', '(\w+)', 'g'<--

/OnlineApplications/library/asp/xmlutil.asp, line 37

(N.B. line 37 is the transform:
fn_xmlutil_TransformXML = objXML.TransformNode(objXSL)
)

I don't think I am including it correctly. I have tried various options for the "src" value, but none of them work.

Any more help greatly appreciated.

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rdcpro

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colly92002

ASKER

That should do it for me.

I don't understand why I get msxml3.dll error, I thought I had msxml4 installed! However, this is a production server that uses MSXML all the time so I don't want to go messing about with it now. I shall make sure my new server is running MSXML 4.

Is it possible to "include" your above example ( like a SSI in HTML ?) so I could build up a library of code like this using MSXML3? I always assumed that this would be easy, but the only way I can see to do it is using extensions (as per my example above that doesn't work) ?

Thanks.

rdcpro

Well, you can include and import XSLT documents. That would work for you, I think. Check out xsl:include and xsl:import. You can also use Extension Objects in XSLT, so you could create a series of classes that did what you wanted. This is a bit harder, but might be worth it if you're doing this on a large scale.

To use MSXML 4, you must be sure to use the correct ProgId: "Msxml2.DomDocument.4.0" or "Msxml2.FreeThreadedDomDocument.4.0"

There are similar ProgIds for the XSLTemplate processor. The version-independant ProgIds are always going to use MSXML 3, if it's installed, and MSXML 2, if not.

Regards,
Mike Sharp

colly92002

ASKER

Thanks for that. The ProgId is at fault! I set the whole thing up from scratch from a position of learning everything, and I was using the old namespace for my XSLT definitions (microsoft examples!).

I shall fix all that for the next release.

You have been of great help thank you very much! I have been using XML/XSLT now for 2 years and have set up a full reporting system for used by five data analyst, and yet I am still just a rookie at it! Experts Exchange has helped me so much.

Thanks again.

Iain.