In XPATH 2.0 there is a function that allows me to replace a substring in a string with another string. I'd like to do this using xalan. Unfortunately, it doesn't support the EXSLT method str:replace and it only uses XSLT 1.0 stylesheets. Including the function from exslt.org doesn't seem to work. If I try using the function style, it complains that it can't find str:replace. If I try using the template style, it complains that it can't find node-set, even though it is supported. translate is useless since it's just a character swap. Any ideas?
You can write your own function which can immitate xslt 2.0 replace :
<xsl:template name="replace">
<xsl:param name="text" />
<xsl:param name="replace" />
<xsl:param name="by" />
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="contains($text, $replace)">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text,$replace)" />
<xsl:value-of select="$by" />
<xsl:call-template name="replace">
<xsl:with-param name="text"
select="substring-after($text,$replace)" />
<xsl:with-param name="replace" select="$replace" />
<xsl:with-param name="by" select="$by" />
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$text" />
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
If you call it like this :
<xsl:variable name="replacedString">
<xsl:call-template name="replace">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="'This'" />
<xsl:with-param name="replace" select="'This'" />
<xsl:with-param name="by" select="'That'" />
</xsl:call-template>
Your resulting $replacedString will have the value "That"