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xmlxsltvelocityapache-fop

Variables being evaluated twice in XSLT template and Velocity

I have a xslt template that creates a FOP file that, afterwards, I want to evaluate with velocity. When I have something like this:

<fo:basic-link internal-destination="${variableOutside}">
      ${variableInside}
</fo:basic-link>

Both variables "variableInside" and "variableOutside" are supposed to be evaluated by velocity and NOT by XSLT.

However, after the first XSLT transformation, what I get is:

<fo:basic-link internal-destination="$">
      ${variableInside}
</fo:basic-link>

That is, the variableInside has already been evaluated because XSLT assumes this is not a literal string but a variable and, since it doesn't have any value for it, it leaves it blank.

VariableOutside is, however, left unused because it is not in an attribute I guess.

Now, I know I can get rid of the curly braces and that will work, but sometimes, I need to only convert one part of the text, so, for example:

${variableOutside}.field1

Should become

valueofvariable.field1

And if I don't use the curly braces, Velocity will assume that I am looking for the field1 inside variableOutside which doesn't exist.

So, my question is, how do I escape the curly braces? I have tried with both "/" and "\" (double and single) and also with { and } but none of them work.

Solution

  • If you want to literally output curly braces in an attribute, rather than have XSLT treat them as Attribute Value Templates, use double braces

    <fo:basic-link internal-destination="${{variableOutside}}">