Working with Expressions, Variables and xsl:for-each in XSLT
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This is the fourth 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 is on working with XSLT. You can use any transformation engine according to your requirements (such as Java or others).
A
downloadable zip file is available for this article.
In this article, I will focus on working with expressions, defining, initializing and using variables and finally the “xsl:for-each” construct 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 that you 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 it with the extensions XML or XSL to work with your own XSL parsers/engines.
I didn’t really test any of the code in any of the other tools/IDEs/servers/editions/versions. If you have any problems, please feel free to post in the discussion area.
Working with simple expressions in XSLT
Let us start with a business need such that I would like to have all the employee details listed with:
- salary (which is listed by the monthly rate)
- annual salary (salary multiplied by 12)
I would like to implement the above business need using an “expression” within “xsl:value-of.” 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">
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
</td>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="text() * 12"/>
</td>
</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>4400</td>
<td>52800</td>
<td>10</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1002</td>
<td>Chat</td>
<td>2800</td>
<td>33600</td>
<td>20</td>
</tr>
.
.
.
</table>
The most important statement within the above code is the following:
<xsl:value-of select="text() * 12"/>
The above statement simply gets the text (or content) associated with the current context and multiplies it by 12 (which gives us the annual salary).
Next: Working with simple variables in XSLT >>
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