Escape Character to xml conversion

Question

My requirement is like

Input :-

<request> <attribute> <attributeName>Name</attributeName> <attributeValue>a &amp; b</attributeValue> </attribute> <attribute> <attributeName>Name1</attributeName> <attributeValue>b</attributeValue> </attribute> </request>

Output:-

<request> <attribute> <attributeName>Name</attributeName> <attributeValue>a & b</attributeValue> </attribute> <attribute> <attributeName>Name1</attributeName> <attributeValue>b</attributeValue> </attribute> </request>

Escape characters can come in n number of tags and i need to replace all at run time as attribute element type is unbounded. How can i achieve the same in xslt???

Answer 1

This produces the output you want! (Let me know if it doesn't!)

The identity template, copies all elements.

The ampText template, looks for all text containing &

The letters template iterates (recursively) over all letters in the text, and replaces all instances of & with &.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 >
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />

<xsl:template name="identity" match="* | @*">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="* | @* | text()" />
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="ampText" match="text()[contains(.,'&amp;')]">
    <xsl:call-template name="letters">
        <xsl:with-param name="text" select="." />
    </xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="letters">
  <xsl:param name="text" select="'Some text'" />
  <xsl:if test="$text != ''">
    <xsl:variable name="letter" select="substring($text, 1, 1)" />
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="$letter = '&amp;'">
            <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[&]]></xsl:text>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="$letter" /></xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
    <xsl:call-template name="letters">
      <xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text, $letter)" />
    </xsl:call-template>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>