Working with xsl:choose in XSLT - Working with xsl:choose in XSLT: explanation

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Let us understand the code step by step.  Let us start with the following:

<xsl:template match="/">

      <table border="1">

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

      </table>

</xsl:template>

From the above code fragment, you can easily understand that I am emitting a TABLE tag and the content of the TABLE tag is based on the template defined in each and every “SQLData/Rows.”  The template for “SQLData/Rows” is defined as follows:

<xsl:template match="SQLData/Rows">

      <tr>

            <td>

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

            </td>

            <td>

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

            </td>

            <td>

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

            </td>

            <td>

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

            </td>

      </tr>

</xsl:template>

According to the above, you can understand that I am emitting a TR tag for every “SQLData/Rows.”  Within the TR, I am also emitting a TD tag along with the content available in leaf nodes (like Empno, Ename etc.).  The only exception is the following TD emission:

            <td>

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

            </td>

The above emits a TD tag but the content is based on the template defined separately for the “Sal” node.  The template for the “Sal” node is defined as follows:

<xsl:template match="Sal">

      <xsl:choose>

            <xsl:when test="text() > '3500'">

                  <b>

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

                  </b>

            </xsl:when>

            <xsl:otherwise>

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

            </xsl:otherwise>

      </xsl:choose>

</xsl:template>

The above template may be necessary as we need to test for a condition on “Sal.” From the above code fragment, you can understand that a single “xsl:choose” can be embedded with any number of conditions using “xsl:when.” The “text()” is nothing but the content of “Sal” (in this case). 

The text gets compared with a value of 3500 and emits the text with bold tags if the condition evaluates to true.  If the condition evaluates to false, “xsl:otherwise” gets executed and it emits only the content (without any bold tags).

Next: Emitting HTML together with CSS using XSLT >>
 

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