Working with Both xsl:if and xsl:choose in XSLT

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This is the third article in a series focusing on developing XSLT-oriented applications using ASP.NET 2.0. Even though the series is based on ASP.NET 2.0, I use it only as a transformation engine. The entire focus will be on working with XSLT. You can use any transformation engine according to your requirements (such as Java or others).

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A downloadable zip file is available for this article.

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In this article, I will focus on working with the "xsl:choose" and "xsl:if" constructs available in XSLT.  The entire setup and sample XML for this article is the same as that of the first two articles in this series.  If you come across any problems, I strongly suggest you to go through my first and second articles in this series.

The entire solution (source code) for this article is available as a free download (in the form of a zip).  All the applications in this series have been developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition together with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition as the database.  You can even directly copy and paste the code given in this article and save with the XML or XSL extensions and work with your own XSL parsers/engines.

I didn't really test any of the code in any of the tools/IDEs/servers/editions/versions.  If you have any problems, please feel free to post in the discussion area.

Working with "xsl:if" in XSLT

I already introduced "xsl:choose" in my previous article.  Now, I will start discussing "xsl:if."

Let us start with a business need. Say that I would like to have all the employee details listed with:

• salary in red, if earnings are more than 4000
• salary in blue, if earnings are more than 3000 and less than 4000

I would like to implement the above business need using the "xsl:if" construct in XSLT.  The following is the entire code for the same:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"

    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">

      <table border="1">

      <xsl:apply-templates select="SQLData/Rows" />

      </table>

</xsl:template>  

<xsl:template match="SQLData/Rows">

      <tr>

            <td>

                  <xsl:value-of select="Empno"/>

            </td>

            <td>

                  <xsl:value-of select="Ename"/>

            </td>

            <xsl:apply-templates select="Sal" />

            <td>

                  <xsl:value-of select="Deptno"/>

            </td>

      </tr>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Sal">

      <xsl:if test="text() &gt; '4000'">

            <td style="color: red">

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

            </td>

      </xsl:if>

      <xsl:if test="text() &gt; '3000' and text() &lt; '4000'">

            <td style="color: blue">

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

            </td>

      </xsl:if>

      <xsl:if test="text() &gt; '0' and text() &lt; '3000'">

            <td>

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

            </td>

      </xsl:if>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

When the above code gets executed, you are likely to get the following transformation:

<table border="1">

      <tr>

            <td>1001</td>

            <td>Jag</td>

            <td style="color: red">4400</td>

            <td>10</td>

      </tr>

      <tr>

            <td>1002</td>

            <td>Chat</td>

            <td>2800</td>

            <td>20</td>

      </tr>

      <tr>

            <td>1003</td>

            <td>Winner</td>

            <td style="color: blue">3700</td>

            <td>10</td>

      </tr>

      <tr>

            <td>1004</td>

            <td>Dhan</td>

            <td style="color: red">5000</td>

            <td>20</td>

      </tr>

</table>

 

The most important problem with "xsl:if" is that it doesn't have (at the time of this writing) any "else" structure.  If you need an "else" structure, you may have to use "xsl:choose" as explained in my previous article.

Next: Nesting xsl:if within another >>
 

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