problem specifying CDATA element in xsl:output instruction

Question

consider this....

<xsl:output method="xml" cdata-section-elements="urn:data"/>

that works nicely BUT, what if I have some urn:data elements that I do want CDATA, and some I dont.

the obvious thing to do is specify a path!

<xsl:output method="xml" cdata-section-elements="urn:OperatorSpecificData/urn:data"/>

that would work (in theory)...but it doesnt, because paths arent allowed.

hmmmm.

any ideas?

(ok, maybe I could create my own custom element and then "copy" the document with the custom element out, replacing the custom element with the actual requirement element....though i have suspicion the 'cdata' nature of the data would be lost and it would become standard escaped string data)

Answer 1

One option might be to use serialize() in a template specific to the element you want to have CDATA.

Not sure if there's a way to do it without resorting to xsl:value-of w/DOE (disable-output-escaping) though.

Example...

XML Input

<doc>
    <yes>
        <foo>test</foo>
    </yes>
    <no>
        <foo>test</foo>
    </no>
</doc>

XSLT 3.0

<xsl:stylesheet version="3.0" 
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
    exclude-result-prefixes="xs">
    <xsl:output indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
        
    <xsl:mode on-no-match="shallow-copy"/>
    
    <xsl:template match="yes/foo">
        <xsl:value-of 
            select="serialize(., map{'cdata-section-elements':(xs:QName('foo'))})" 
            disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
    </xsl:template>
    
</xsl:stylesheet>

XML Output

<doc>
   <yes><foo><![CDATA[test]]></foo></yes>
   <no>
      <foo>test</foo>
   </no>
</doc>