Converting special characters in xml using XSLT

Question

Am trying to convert the special characters in xml to their encoded forms using xslt.

Example:

& to &amp; 
" to &quot; 
< to &lt; 
> to &gt;

and so on. The code am using is given below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="//search-results/items" />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="items">
    <textarea>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="file-item" />
    </textarea>
</xsl:template>


<xsl:template match="file-item">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="." mode="details"/>    
</xsl:template>


<xsl:template match="*" mode="details">
    <file-item>
        <id><xsl:value-of select = "@id"/></id>
        <xsl:copy-of select = "name"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select = "creation-date" />
        <xsl:copy-of select = "modification-date"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select = "file-info"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select = "creator"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select = "last-modifier"/>     
      </file-item>        
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

The XML structure is

<id>5060554</id>
<name>This is a File && and it is a "Test File" </name>
<creation-date timestamp="1487516375360">19.02.2017 14:59</creation-date>
<modification-date timestamp="1488128705695">26.02.2017 17:05</modification-date>
<file-info>
<name>Background-Wallpaper & Nature.jpg</name>
<creator user-id="2196">
<last-modifier user-id="2120">

The output should contain the xml nodes as well, and that is why am using xsl:copy of in a textarea instead of xsl:value-of. Becausse xsl:value-of select="name" will only output This is a File && and it is a "Test File" whereas xsl:copy-of will produce This is a File && and it is a "Test File"

Am using XSLT version 1.o

The desired output that am looking for is This is a File & & and it is a "Test File"

To process XML with XSLT, you need well-formed input data. The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference. This means that & character needs to be escaped in the input or tagged as CDATA (same applies to < character). Most XSLT processors won't even process the file, complaining about the input file. — Lesiak
Hi Lesiak, the data is directly coming from the database, and we are converting the data to xml and then to html (UI view of the website) using XSLT. So, I dont have control to modify the xml — rosebrit3
Then you need to do it another way, not xslt, because as said xslt processes well-formed xml which your database output is not. — Stefan Hegny
If you are working in a SOA environment, you could perhaps use a java embedding before your transformation in which you convert special characters to their respective xml counterparts. In this case the transformation in xslt will no longer be necessary for the special characters. — Jesper Vernooij

Michael Kay Michael Kay · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-16T22:45:10

You say that the input XML contains

<name>This is a File && and it is a "Test File" </name>

That's a contradiction. If it contains that string, then it isn't XML. Ampersands in XML are always escaped. And if the input isn't XML, then you can't use XSLT to process it.

You say "we are converting the data to xml and then to html (UI view of the website) using XSLT." It seems you are converting the data to XML incorrectly, and you need to fix that.

Converting special characters in xml using XSLT

1 Answers