Get Cwcm: Xsl Best Practices User Manual

Once you declare a variable, you can reference it within an XPath expression using the variable name prefixed with a dollar sign ($). Variables are immutable; you can set the value of a variable only when you declare the variable, after which point, the value is fixed.

The <xsl:param> element allows you to define a default value for the parameter. If the calling template doesn't supply a value, the default is used instead. The last three <xsl:param> elements in our previous example define default values. The <xsl:param> element has the same content model as <xsl:variable> .

The default template, also referred to as built-in template rule, is defined in section 5.8 of the W3C XSLT 1.0 Recommendation. The default template allows the XSLT processor to process a node, even though there is no explicit template rule that matches it.

The xsl:sequence element may be used to produce any sequence of nodes and/or atomic values. These are included in the result sequence directly. Unlike xsl:copy-of, no copy is made. The most common use is to return a result from a function (see Example 1).

You can start the debugger when you have either a style sheet or an input XML file open in the editor. This lets you debug as you're designing the style sheet. Open the style sheet or XML file in Visual Studio. Select Start XSLT Debugging from the XML menu or press Alt+F5.

The logical OR ( || ) operator is used to provide a default value when a variable is falsy. The falsy values in JavaScript are false , 0 , '' (empty string), null , undefined , and NaN . When using the || operator, the first operand is returned if it evaluates to true ; otherwise, the second operand is returned.

In the application toolbar, choose with the quick info text Test XSLT Program or press F8 to start the test environment. The XSLT Tester screen appears. Specify the path for uploading the XML source document. Specify the output of the transformation.