Xml – Cannot get xslt to output an (&) even after escaping the character

escapinginvalid-charactersxmlxslt

I am trying to create a query string of variable assignments separated by the & symbol (ex: "var1=x&var2=y&..."). I plan to pass this string into an embedded flash file.

I am having trouble getting an & symbol to show up in XSLT. If I just type & with no tags around it, there is a problem rendering the XSLT document. If I type & with no tags around it, then the output of the document is & with no change. If I type <xsl:value-of select="&" /> or <xsl:value-of select="&" /> I also get an error. Is this possible? Note: I have also tried &amp; with no success.

Best Answer

You can combine disable-output-escaping with a CDATA section. Try this:

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[&]]></xsl:text>

Related Solutions

R – Why is the XSLT disable-output-escaping not implemented in Firefox

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98168#c99 and subsequent comments describe the current status of the bug: "disable-output-escaping" can be implemented in Firefox, but it requires a different approach when processing the stylesheet than the one used by Firefox's XSLT processor (serialize+parse instead of creating a DOM tree while processing the stylesheet). Patches are accepted, but it seems that no-one plans to spend time on fixing the issue.

Even if it's implemented, such stylesheets will require more CPU resources to be processed, and Mozilla developers say that usually there's a better solution than using d-o-e. If you want help in your specific case, you should describe it in more detail (although I probably won't be able to help).

In XSLT, how do you select/copy part of the document as text only

Try this, but note that it won't handle nested CDATA correctly:

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;</xsl:text>
<xsl:text>![CDATA[</xsl:text>

<xsl:copy-of select="..." />

<xsl:text>]]</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&gt;</xsl:text>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

R – Why is the XSLT disable-output-escaping not implemented in Firefox

In XSLT, how do you select/copy part of the document as text only

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