Hi all,

XSL Novice

In the source XML I have a Display_Count node that is the
number of lines to display in the output HTML generated by
my XSL.

So for example, if <Display_Count>10</Display_Count> I get 10
lines, if <Display_Count>5</Display_Count> I get 5.

I set a variable loop_num to be used as a loop counter later
in the XSL as follows:

<xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="//Display_Count"/>

This works fine.

Now I want to handle the case where the Display_Count node
does not exist in the XML input. That is, I want to set a
default value (say, of 3) for loop_num in that case.

I ran into the problem where a variable cannot be reassigned
and its definition cannot be duplicated in the current scope.

So something like this will not work:

<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not(//Display_Count)">
<xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="1"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsltherwise>
<xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="//Display_Count"/>
</xsltherwise>
</xsl:choose>

How can I set the varable loop_num to some default constant
value if the Display_Count node does not exist or to the value
of the Display_Count node if it does exist?

Thanks
kpg

kpg wrote:

> So something like this will not work:
>
> <xsl:choose>
> <xsl:when test="not(//Display_Count)">
> <xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="1"/>
> </xsl:when>
> <xsltherwise>
> <xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="//Display_Count"/>
> </xsltherwise>
> </xsl:choose>

The other way round works:
<xsl:variable name="loop_num">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not(//Display_Count)">3</xsl:when>
<xsltherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="//Display_Count"/>
</xsltherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

With XSLT 2.0 you could use the much shorter
<xsl:variable name="loop_num"
select="if (not(//Display_Count)) then 3 else
//Display_Count"/>
--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/