CDATA handling 1

[anuj7700]

Hi everybody there,
Hope you guys can help me here. I am having an XML that contains CDATA sections and these CDATA sections contain text and the HTML Formating tags for formatting that text something like
<Tag><![CDATA[ <FONT size="10"> <I> Hello & There </I> </FONT>]]>

Now as you see here this CDATA section contains tags as well as may contain some more special characters like '&' here.

I have written an XSL to transform this XML. Now the thing is that i want to process the content of CDATA section as well lets say i want to replace <FONT size="10"> <I> Hello & There </I> </FONT> with <fo:inline font-size="10"> Hello & There </fo:inline>

I am not able to find a way to process the content of CDATA and apply transformation to it.

Please let me know if anybody knows a way to do this. I have ready templates for html formatting tags which may appear in CDATA section but i don't know a way to subject this content to these templates.

Thanks in advance for ur replies

 

[CubeE101]

All text in an XML document will be parsed by the parser.
Only text inside a CDATA section is ignored by the parser.

See

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_cdata.asp

for more info...

CDATA is not meant to be proccessed... It is strictly for display...

You may be able to set up a series of <xsl:if> tags to handle the CDATA...
But, you need to take the tags out of the CDATA block if you want to process them the correct way...

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[chiph]

You might be able to read the contents of the CDATA section into a XSL variable, but then you'd be doing string parsing to find stuff inside. yuck.

Chip H.


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[CubeE101]

...but then you'd be doing string parsing to find stuff inside. yuck.

Yeah! That's what I why hinting at with the "...series of <xsl:if> tags to handle the CDATA..."

Personally, I wouldn't want to bother going to all that trouble ;-)

My question is...
Why are you using CDATA to store tags???

CDATA is mainly meant for Code DATA, such as javascript, C++, or any other language, that could have characters that conflict with XML/XSL characters...

If you are just using it for:

<Tag><![CDATA[ <FONT size="10"> <I> Hello & There </I> </FONT>]]>

Why can't you simply use:

<Tag>
  <FONT size="10">
    <I>Hello & There</I>
  </FONT>
</Tag>

And use XSL, the way it was meant to be used, to transform the tags...

<xsl:for-each select="Tag">
  <fo:inline font-size="{@size}"><xsl:value-of select="I" /></fo:inline>
</xsl:for-each>

Though, your <xsl:for-each> method might be a little more complex, when you actually apply it...
Depending on what you are actually trying to accomplish ;-)

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[CubeE101]

An example of a useful way to use CDATA that comes to my mind would be...

Say you are writing a program for, say, JavaScript, and you want to store functions with descriptions in xml, via tags...

The code could contain one of these characters: < > " ' &

So you would use CDATA to store this code in XML, so it won't hang up the parser...

<JavaStuff>
  <Function>
    <Name>average</Name>
    <Description>Function to average 2 numbers</Description>
    <Code>
<![CDATA[
function average(a,b)
{
  var c = (a + b) / 2;
  return c;
}
]]>
    </Code>
  </Function>
  <Function>
    <Name>add</Name>
    <Description>Function to add 2 numbers</Description>
    <Code>
<![CDATA[
function add(a,b)
{
  var c = a + b;
  return c;
}
]]>
    </Code>
  </Function>
</JavaStuff>

But, If you are just using tags, such as for html, there is no reason to use CDATA

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[anuj7700]

Actually i am immplementing a web based form which also includes text formatting editors in some fields. So i need to store the HTML formating information that may be applied to the text content and then there can be special charaters that user might want to enter as a part of text.
So at moment i just enclose all the field content inside a CDATA section and thus preserve everything.
Isn't there any wayout using template functions or anything else ofcourse i do not want to do string parsing as that would be too painfull as you know well. Haven't you ever come across any such thing done previously.

 

[JontyMC]

Why do you need to put the HTML tags in CDATA sections? The XML will maintain special characters.

Jon

 

[CubeE101]

So i need to store the HTML formating information that may be applied to the text content and then there can be special charaters that user might want to enter as a part of text.

Again... like I said above... The ONLY text that needs to be placed in CDATA is text with characters that conflict with XML...

Such as where < means greater than, instead of the start of a tag...

HTML does NOT conflict with XML, they are based on the same language style...

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[chiph]

But even if you didn't want to use CDATA sections, you could still use the XML reserved characters, you'd just have to use their entity version:
[ignore]
< &lt;
> &gt;
& &amp;
' &apos;
" &quot;
[/ignore]

Messy, but works.

Chip H.


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[CubeE101]

Messy, but works.

Messy... heh... Yeah...
You can say that again ;-)

<rant>
I wish they would have decided to just use some form of the good 'ole escape set...
Like:
\<
\>
\&
\'
\"
\\

<sarcasm>
I know I just love to see stuff like:

<test value="test">x && y > z</test>

</sarcasm>

Personally, I think this would be easier on the eyes ;-)

\<test value=\"test\"\>x \&\& y \> z\</test\>

Maybe not much... but definitely a little...

But I guess we're stuck with: &x;

(plus, I guess it "could" interfere with the URLs... but, COME ON...
</rant>

OK... 'nuff of that...

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