Hello, XML-dev:
I am writing an XSLT filter which reads an XML file, and
generates a shorter XML file with some selected elements (and
all their children) removed.
So far, my filter gives me output which is valid, well-formed XML,
but it has blank lines where the removed elements used to be. Formally, I
think the text node before the removed element remains, causing the
blank line. I would like to remove this blank line, but leave all other
indentation as-is. How can I do this?
(If you winning points on Stackoverflow, this question is at
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35407361/how-can-my-xslt-filter-avoid-leaving-blank-lines-in-output-xml-when-deleting-ele>,
and I will upvote good answer there. A reply on this list is also welcome.
The best answer so far on Stack Overflow says, essentially, that with
XSLT 1.0 I'm hooped, but with XSLT 3.0 there are nice ways to express
this filter.)
A simplified version of my XSLT filter is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" indent="yes" encoding="utf-8" />
<xsl:template match="node() | @*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node() | @*" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="root/maybe[remove]" />
</xsl:stylesheet>
A very simplified version of my input XML file is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
<maybe><keep /></maybe>
<maybe><remove/></maybe>
</root>
Yes, the indentation is non-standard. I'm trying to make the point
that I want the filter to leave the indentation it finds, except for
the elements it removes. This lets me confirm the result using conventional
diff.
The output I get now (using xsltproc from libxslt, on MacOS X 10.10):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
<maybe><keep/></maybe>
</root>
The blank line between <keep/> and </root> is what I'm trying to eliminate.
Now, elsewhere on [Stack Overflow], related questions "XSLT: how to prevent
the XSLT code from generating redundant blank-space in output xml"
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1899687/xslt-how-to-prevent-the-xslt-code-from-generating-redundant-blank-space-in-outp>
and "Removing blank lines in XSLT"
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3265244/removing-blank-lines-in-xslt>
suggest adding xsl:strip-space <https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#element-strip-space>
to the XSLT filter:
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
When I try that, the output file no longer has the blank line, but it
now has different indentation than the original:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>
<maybe>
<keep/>
</maybe>
</root>
(Note that <maybe> and <keep/> and </maybe> are now on separate lines,
and indented differently.)
So, is there an XSLT element which will remove the blank line along
with the element, but leave the other indentation and line breaks
intact?
Also, my real files are from GnuCash <http://gnucash.org/> and have
a much more complex structure. My real XSLT filter has a more
complex match expression. Thus, an XSLT element which doesn't require me
to repeat the match expression is preferred.
<xsl:template match='gnc-v2//gnc:account[@version="2.0.0"]/act:slots/
slot[slot:key/text()="import-map-bayes"]/slot:value[@type="frame"]/
slot/slot:value[@type="frame"]/slot[starts-with(slot:key/text(),
"Assets, Business, CAD:"
)]'
/>
I'm using XSLT 1.0 because that's what my tool supports. Does XSLT 2.0
provide a better answer for this question?
Thank you in advance for your help.
--
--Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh@jdlh.com http://blog.jdlh.com/ (and jdlh.com)
multilingual websites consultant, Vancouver BC, Canada.
