xsl: how to split strings?

Question

I want to split an address on semicolons (;) into rows separated by <br />:

e.g. if address=123 Elm Street, I want to output 123 Elm Street,

but if address=123 Elm Street;PO Box 222, I want to output

123 Elm Street<br />PO Box 222 

and if address=123 Elm Street;PO Box 222;c/o James Jones, I want to output

123 Elm Street<br />PO Box 222<br />c/o James Jones 

Is there a way to do this? (probably easy but I'm not that familiar with XSLT)

The plain XSL selector is

<xsl:value-of select="address"/> 

and I would like to modify this XSLT fragment to split on semicolon.

---

update: Apparently the answer involves the use of <xsl:call-template> and the functions substring-before() and substring-after().

But I'm a beginner to XSLT and I could really use some help for how to do this.

Answer 1

I. Plain XSLT 1.0 solution:

This transformation:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>   <xsl:template match="text()" name="split">   <xsl:param name="pText" select="."/>   <xsl:if test="string-length($pText)">    <xsl:if test="not($pText=.)">     <br />    </xsl:if>    <xsl:value-of select=     "substring-before(concat($pText,';'),';')"/>    <xsl:call-template name="split">     <xsl:with-param name="pText" select=      "substring-after($pText, ';')"/>    </xsl:call-template>   </xsl:if>  </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

when applied on this XML document:

<t>123 Elm Street;PO Box 222;c/o James Jones</t> 

produces the wanted, corrected result:

123 Elm Street<br />PO Box 222<br />c/o James Jones 

II. FXSL 1 (for XSLT 1.0):

Here we just use the FXSL template str-map (and do not have to write recursive template for the 999th time):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:f="http://fxsl.sf.net/" xmlns:testmap="testmap" exclude-result-prefixes="xsl f testmap" >    <xsl:import href="str-dvc-map.xsl"/>     <testmap:testmap/>     <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>     <xsl:template match="/">      <xsl:variable name="vTestMap" select="document('')/*/testmap:*[1]"/>      <xsl:call-template name="str-map">        <xsl:with-param name="pFun" select="$vTestMap"/>        <xsl:with-param name="pStr" select=        "'123 Elm Street;PO Box 222;c/o James Jones'"/>      </xsl:call-template>    </xsl:template>      <xsl:template name="replace" mode="f:FXSL"          match="*[namespace-uri() = 'testmap']">       <xsl:param name="arg1"/>        <xsl:choose>        <xsl:when test="not($arg1=';')">         <xsl:value-of select="$arg1"/>        </xsl:when>        <xsl:otherwise><br /></xsl:otherwise>       </xsl:choose>     </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

when this transformation is applied on any XML document (not used), the same, wanted correct result is produced:

123 Elm Street<br/>PO Box 222<br/>c/o James Jones 

III. Using XSLT 2.0

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>   <xsl:template match="text()">   <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(.,';')">    <xsl:sequence select="."/>    <xsl:if test="not(position() eq last())"><br /></xsl:if>   </xsl:for-each>  </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

when this transformation is applied on this XML document:

<t>123 Elm Street;PO Box 222;c/o James Jones</t> 

the wanted, correct result is produced:

123 Elm Street<br />PO Box 222<br />c/o James Jones 

Answer 2

If your XSLT processor supports EXSLT, you can use str:tokenize, otherwise, the link contains an implementation using functions like substring-before.