[thelist] preserving HTML in XSL

Thu Jan 24 13:57:01 CST 2002

-- Alister Cameron [Thu, 24 Jan 2002 23:56:37 +1100]:
>SUMMARY: I am looking for the generic how-to answer for including a
>chunk of pre-prepared HTML in an XML file so that when the XML file is
>transformed into HTML for the client (I'm just working with v4 and up web browser
>clients here), the HTML slots into the rest of what the xsl
>stylesheet has spat out, all as HTML to be rendered by the browser... no escaped
>crap!

how about this:

------ XML ------

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<item>
    <title>This is the title</title>
    <content><![CDATA[
        <h1>This is the content</h1>
        and will be displayed with all of the <b>proper formatting</b> that is placed in this node.
    ]]></content>
</item>

---------------------

-------- XSL -----------
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output encoding="iso-8859-1" method="html" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/item">
        <html>
            <head>
                <title><xsl:value-of select="title"/></title>
            </head>
            <body>
                <xsl:value-of select="content" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
            </body>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
------------------------

I haven;t tested this specific code, but I do this all day long, so it should work without much headache.

the key is the <![CDATA[ ]]>  block, which tells the XSL not to parse the data inside, and the disable-output-escaping="yes"  which tells the XSL not to turn thigns like < into &lt;

---
Eric Vitiello
Perceive Designs
<www.perceive.net>