xslt:if how to test for boolean values

Question

I cannot figure out a way to check if the value of an element is "true" or "false".

It's boolean, converted from a dataset. When I select the value, I see it is either "true" or "false", but my test does not get the expected behaviour. (it is always false.) I tried almost everything, this is my first xslt application, so help is appreciated.

      <xsl:if test="ispassive">
        <tr>
          <td>
            <em>pasif değil</em>
            <hr></hr>
          </td>
        </tr>
      </xsl:if>

Answer 1

After posting here I realized that my <xsl:if> test was outside my <xsl:for-each> loop.

After repositioning the <xsl:if> conditions, I found out that this works for me.

        <xsl:if test="ispassive='true'">
          <tr>
            <td>
              <em>pasif</em>
              <hr></hr>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </xsl:if>

Comparing the evaluated string value of the ispassive element to 'true' works fine, (which I had tried before, but because I misplaced it in the xslt, it was always failing because it failed to select the ispassive element to evaluate it's value.

Answer 2

Depending how you represent your booleans it could be a lot of things, what does your data look like?

Most likely scenario, false is represented as 0 and true could be any non 0 value.

<xsl:if test="$myvalue = 0">
    -- output if false --
</xsl:if>

but you're likely better of using xsl:choose

<xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="$myvalue = 0">
        -- output if false --
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
        -- output if true --
    </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

You can leave out the otherwise, if you don't need it.

Answer 3

This xslt is looking for a node in the current context called ispassive.

So if your xml is

<Root>
   <ispassive />
</Root>

You'll get true. Generally, you should specify an xpath to the value you want to check. So if your xml is

<Root>
      <Node ispassive="true"/>
</Root>

and you replace

<xsl:if test="ispassive">

with

<xsl:if test="//@ispassive = 'true'">

Your stylesheet will work as expected.