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xml

Are Arithmetic operations evaluated in xml

I have below sample xml,

<Field name="Test" value=5+5></Field>

Here, can the value for "Test" evaluate to 10? Can we perform arthimeric operations inside xml directly. Can anyone please help.

Solution

  • First, it's not XML unless you put quotes round the attribute value:

    <Field name="Test" value="5+5"/>

    It's quite common to use XPath for this kind of thing. 5+5 is a valid XPath expression and you can transform your document using XSLT 3.0 to contain

    <Field name="Test" value="10"/>

    by doing

    <xsl:template match="Field/@value">
  <xsl:attribute name="value">
    <xsl:evaluate xpath="."/>
  </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>