Producing a new line in XSLT

Question

I want to produce a newline for text output in XSLT  Any ideas

User · Answer

I have found a difference between literal newlines in <xsl:text> and literal newlines using 
.

While literal newlines worked fine in my environment (using both Saxon and the default Java XSLT processor) my code failed when it was executed by another group running in a .NET environment.

Changing to entities (
) got my file generation code running consistently on both Java and .NET.

Also, literal newlines are vulnerable to being reformatted by IDEs and can inadvertently get lost when the file is maintained by someone 'not in the know'.

User · Answer

Include the attribute Method  text  on the xsl output tag and include newlines in your literal content in the XSL at the appropriate points   If you prefer to keep the source code of your XSL tidy use the entity  amp  10  where you want a new line

User · Answer

You can use   lt xsl text gt  amp  10  lt  xsl text gt   see the example   lt xsl variable name  module-info  gt     lt xsl value-of select   name    gt     lt xsl value-of select   rev    gt     lt xsl text gt  amp  10  lt  xsl text gt   lt  xsl variable gt    if you write this in file e g    lt redirect write file  temp prop  append  true  gt     lt xsl value-of select   module-info    gt   lt  redirect write gt    this variable will produce a new line infile as   commons-dbcp commons-dbcp   1 2 2 junit junit   4 4 org easymock easymock   2 4

User · Answer

I couldn t just use the  lt xsl text gt  amp  xa  lt  xsl text gt  approach because if I format the XML file using XSLT the entity will disappear   So I had to use a slightly more round about approach using variables   lt xsl variable name  nl  select    amp  10     gt   lt xsl template match     gt       lt xsl value-of select   nl  disable-output-escaping  no   gt       lt xsl apply-templates select      gt   lt  xsl template gt

User · Answer

You can try    lt xsl text gt  amp  xA  lt  xsl text gt    It will work

User · Answer

just add this tag     lt br  gt    it works for me

User · Answer

IMHO no more info than  Florjon gave is needed  Maybe some small details are left to understand why it might not work for us sometimes   First of all  the  amp  xa  hex  or  amp  10  dec  inside a  lt xsl text  gt  will always work  but you may not see it     There is no newline in a HTML markup  Using a simple  lt br  gt  will do fine  Otherwise you ll see a white space  Viewing the source from the browser will tell you what really happened  However  there are cases you expect this behaviour  especially if the consumer is not directly a browser  For instance  you want to create an HTML page and view its structure formatted nicely with empty lines and idents before serving it to the browser  Remember where you need to use disable-output-escaping and where you don t  Take the following example where I had to create an xml from another and declare its DTD from a stylesheet     The first version does escape the characters  default for xsl text      lt xsl stylesheet xmlns xsl  http   www w3 org 1999 XSL Transform  version  1 0  gt       lt xsl output method  xml  indent  yes  encoding  utf-8   gt        lt xsl template match     gt           lt xsl text gt  amp lt  DOCTYPE Subscriptions SYSTEM  Subscriptions dtd  amp gt  amp  xa  amp  xa  amp  xd  lt  xsl text gt           lt xsl copy gt               lt xsl apply-templates select     mode  copy   gt           lt  xsl copy gt       lt  xsl template gt       lt xsl template match     node    mode  copy  gt           lt xsl copy gt               lt xsl apply-templates select     node    mode  copy   gt           lt  xsl copy gt       lt  xsl template gt    lt  xsl stylesheet gt    and here is the result    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   amp lt  DOCTYPE Subscriptions SYSTEM  Subscriptions dtd  amp gt    amp  13  lt Subscriptions gt       lt User id  1   gt      lt  Subscriptions gt    Ok  it does what we expect  escaping is done so that the characters we used are displayed properly  The XML part formatting inside the root node is handled by ident  yes   But with a closer look we see that the newline character  amp  xa was not escaped and translated as is  performing a double linefeed  I don t have an explanation on this  will be good to know  Anyone    The second version does not escape the characters so they re producing what they re meant for  The change made was    lt xsl text disable-output-escaping  yes  gt  amp lt  DOCTYPE Subscriptions SYSTEM  Subscriptions dtd  amp gt  amp  xa  amp  xa  amp  xd  lt  xsl text gt    and here is the result    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt  DOCTYPE Subscriptions SYSTEM  Subscriptions dtd  gt    lt Subscriptions gt       lt User id  1   gt      lt  Subscriptions gt    and that will be ok  Both cr and lf are properly rendered       Don t forget we re talking about nl  not crlf  nl lf   My first attempt was to use only cr  amp  xd and while the output xml was validated by DOM properly     I was viewing a corrupted xml    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt Subscriptions gt riptions SYSTEM  Subscriptions dtd  gt       lt User id  1   gt      lt  Subscriptions gt    DOM parser disregarded control characters but the rendered didn t  I spent quite some time bumping my head before I realised how silly I was not seeing this   For the record  I do use a variable inside the body with both CRLF just to be 100  sure it will work everywhere

User · Answer

I added the DOCTYPE directive you see here    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  UTF-8   gt   lt  DOCTYPE xsl stylesheet      lt  ENTITY nl   amp  xa   gt    gt   lt xsl stylesheet xmlns x  http   www w3 org 2005 02 query-test-XQTSCatalog                  xmlns xsl  http   www w3 org 1999 XSL Transform                  version  2 0  gt    This allows me to use  amp nl  instead of  amp  xa  to produce a newline in the output  Like other solutions  this is typically placed inside a  lt xsl text gt  tag

User · Answer

My favoured method for doing this looks something like    lt xsl stylesheet gt    lt xsl output method  text   gt    lt xsl variable name  newline  gt  lt xsl text gt   lt  xsl text gt  lt  xsl variable gt    lt  -- note that the layout there is deliberate -- gt         lt  xsl stylesheet gt    Then  whenever you want to output a newline  perhaps in csv  you can output something like the following    lt xsl value-of select  concat elem1 elem2 elem3  newline     gt    I ve used this technique when outputting sql from xml input  In fact  I tend to create variables for commas  quotes and newlines

User · Answer

I second Nic Gibson s method  this was  always my favorite    lt xsl variable name  nl  gt  lt xsl text gt   lt  xsl text gt  lt  xsl variable gt    However I have been using the Ant task  lt echoxml gt  to  create stylesheets and run them against files   The  task will do attribute value templates  e g    DSTAMP    but is also will reformat your xml  so in some  cases  the entity reference is preferable    lt xsl variable name  nl  gt  lt xsl text gt  amp  xa  lt  xsl text gt  lt  xsl variable gt

User · Answer

The following XSL code will produce a newline  line feed  character    lt xsl text gt  amp  xa  lt  xsl text gt    For a carriage return  use    lt xsl text gt  amp  xd  lt  xsl text gt

User · Answer

I ve noticed from my experience that producing a new line INSIDE a  lt xsl variable gt  clause doesn t work  I was trying to do something like    lt xsl variable name  myVar  gt     lt xsl choose gt       lt xsl when test   myValue        gt         lt xsl text gt My value   lt  xsl text gt         lt xsl value-of select   myValue    gt         lt xsl text gt  lt  xsl text gt   lt  --NEW LINE-- gt         lt xsl text gt My other value   lt  xsl text gt         lt xsl value-of select   myOtherValue    gt       lt  xsl when gt     lt  xsl choose gt   lt xsl variable gt    lt div gt     lt xsl value-of select   myVar   gt   lt  div gt    Anything I tried to put in that  new line   the empty  lt xsl text gt  node  just didn t work  including most of the simpler suggestions in this page   not to mention the fact that HTML just won t work there  so eventually I had to split it to 2 variables  call them outside the  lt xsl variable gt  scope and put a simple  lt br  gt  between them  i e    lt xsl variable name  myVar1  gt     lt xsl choose gt       lt xsl when test   myValue        gt         lt xsl text gt My value   lt  xsl text gt         lt xsl value-of select   myValue    gt       lt  xsl when gt     lt  xsl choose gt   lt xsl variable gt    lt xsl variable name  myVar2  gt     lt xsl choose gt       lt xsl when test   myValue        gt         lt xsl text gt My other value   lt  xsl text gt         lt xsl value-of select   myOtherValue    gt       lt  xsl when gt     lt  xsl choose gt   lt xsl variable gt    lt div gt     lt xsl value-of select   myVar1   gt     lt br  gt     lt xsl value-of select   myVar2   gt   lt  div gt    Yeah  I know  it s not the most sophisticated solution but it works  just sharing my frustration experience with XSLs

[xslt] Producing a new line in XSLT

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