CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlxsltxpathxslt-1.0
user3281385
user3281385

Reputation: 119

Using concat() with a separator in XSLT 1.0

I'm trying to concatenate strings in month/date/year elements into a single value that displays MM/DD/YYYY, but I can't find a way to do it in xslt 1.0 that will include the '/' separator in the way a string-join function would in xslt 2.0. I need to do this without creating new templates or using variables/if-logic because we haven't "learned" that yet in my class. The section of code I'm trying to concatenate looks like this:

<publishedDate>
<month>7</month>
<day>9</day>
<year>2007</year>
</publishedDate>

Currently the best I can do is:

<xsl:value-of select="concat(
format-number(publishedDate/month, '##00', 'date'),
format-number(publishedDate/day, '##00', 'date'),
format-number(publishedDate/year, '####', 'date')
)"/>

Which outputs dates like this: 03082014

In the mean time, for the purposed of the assignment, I'm forced to use a hideous, lengthy workaround that looks like this:

<xsl:value-of select="format-number(publishedDate/month, '##00', 'date')"/>/
<xsl:value-of select="format-number(publishedDate/day, '##00', 'date')" />/
<xsl:value-of select="format-number(publishedDate/year, '####', 'date')" />

And outputs correctly (i.e. 03/08/2014). Do you guys know a way to get this output by using a a 1.0 function? Thanks!

Upvotes: 4

Views: 10129

Answers (2)

helderdarocha
helderdarocha

Reputation: 23637

You're almost there. You just need to add extra parameters containing '/' in the concat() itself (it's still XSLT 1.0 - you can have more than three terms): 

concat(format-number(...), '/', format-number(...), '/', format-number(...))

Upvotes: 5

Jens Erat
Jens Erat

Reputation: 38682

XPath 2.0 (included in XSLT 2.0) would have support for a general solution using string-join($sequence, $seperator):

string-join((
    format-number(publishedDate/month, '##00', 'date'),
    format-number(publishedDate/day, '##00', 'date'),
    format-number(publishedDate/year, '####', 'date')
  ), '/')

This is especially important for joining arbitrary-length sequences, which is not possible in XPath 1.0.

As you only want to combine a fixed number of strings (year/month/day), using concat(...) provided by XPath 1.0/XSLT 1.0 is totally fine:

concat(
  format-number(publishedDate/month, '##00', 'date'),
  '/',
  format-number(publishedDate/day, '##00', 'date'),
  '/',
  format-number(publishedDate/year, '####', 'date')
)

Upvotes: 2

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