XSLT 1.0 Translate String - Change Character to New Line

Question

I am hoping this is a simple one, though it seems it often isn't...

I am working with XLST 1.0 and I have a string which I need to translate. This string is a user-entered text field. It contains several smaller strings separated by a delimiter. (In this case, it's "|".) The length of this string and the number of special characters varies widely.

(This field is similar to a CSV list, however, rather than using a comma as the delimiter, the "|" is the delimiter.)

I need to learn how to change this delimiter to <br>.

I've tried using the following XSL to achieve this:

<xsl:variable name="stringtotrans">
    <xsl:text>String1|String2|String3</xsl:text>
</xsl:vairable>
    <!-- In the actual XML document, this variable grabs the value of an attribute. -->
    <!-- For this example, it's being entered manually. -->
    <!-- The number and length of the individual strings varies widely. -->

<xsl:value-of select="translate($stringtotrans, '|', '&#xA;&#xD;')"/>

When this code is run, the output is:

String1String2String3

The expected/desired output is:

String1
String2
String3

Any and all help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I need to learn how to change this delimiter to <br>.

The following stylesheet:

XSLT 1.0

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

<xsl:template match="/">

    <xsl:variable name="stringtotrans">
        <xsl:text>String1|String2|String3</xsl:text>
    </xsl:variable>

    <p>
        <xsl:call-template name="tokenize">
            <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$stringtotrans"/>
        </xsl:call-template>
    </p>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="tokenize">
    <xsl:param name="text"/>
    <xsl:param name="delimiter" select="'|'"/>
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="contains($text, $delimiter)">
            <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text, $delimiter)"/>
            <br/>
            <!-- recursive call -->
            <xsl:call-template name="tokenize">
                <xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text, $delimiter)"/>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:value-of select="$text"/>
        </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

applied to any XML input, will return:

<p>String1<br>String2<br>String3</p>