23

I want to implement carriage return within xslt. The problem is I have a varible: Step 1 = Value 1 breaktag Step 2 = Value 2 as a string and would like to appear as

Step 1 = Value 1

Step 2 = Value 2

in the HTML form but I am getting the br tag on the page.Any good ways of implementing a line feed/carriage return in xsl would be appreciated

chugh97
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  • See this very similar question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/723226/producing-a-new-line-in-xslt – Coder Nov 30 '15 at 18:43

10 Answers10

44

As an alternative to

<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>

you could use 

<xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text> <!-- newline character -->

or

<xsl:text>&#13;</xsl:text> <!-- carriage return character -->

in case you don't want to mess up your indentation

Steef
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  • My string is in the database AB and when rendered it displays as is and not a line break...tried does not work.Works when hardcoded in xsl file but my values comes from db. – chugh97 Jun 19 '09 at 11:36
  • I think some more information is needed to find a solution to your problem. Could you describe in more detail how you are getting the string from the database and how you are applying the XSL? What is the format of the string in the database? Is it plain text? XML? – Steef Jun 19 '09 at 11:43
9

This works for me, as carriage-return + life feed. 

<xsl:text>&#xD;&#xA;</xsl:text>

The "&#10;" string does not work.

Adam Tauno Williams
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4

The cleanest way I've found is to insert !ENTITY declarations at the top of the stylesheet for newline, tab, and other common text constructs. When having to insert a slew of formatting elements into your output this makes the transform sheet look much cleaner.

For example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [
    <!ENTITY nl "<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>">
]>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

  <xsl:template match="step">
    &nl;&nl;
    <xsl:apply-templates  />
  </xsl:template>
  ...
</xsl:stylesheet>
Stephan
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Como
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3

use a simple carriage return in a xsl:text element

<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
Pierre
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2

I was looking for a nice solution to this, as many would prefer, without embedding escape sequences directly in the expressions, or having weird line breaks inside of a variable. I found a hybrid of both this approaches actually works, by embedding a text node inside a variable like this:

<xsl:variable name="newline"><xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text></xsl:variable>
<xsl:value select="concat(some_element, $newline)" />

Another nice side-affect of this is that you can pass in whatever newline you want, be it just LF, CR, or both CRLF.

--Daniel

Daniel
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  • General XSLT tip: instead of using `xsl:text` in your `xsl:variable`, use a `select` attribute instead. (Example: ``) This way you don't create an unnecessary result tree fragment. – Daniel Haley May 27 '14 at 17:53
  • Also, it might be good to note that you could also use `xsl:param` instead of `xsl:variable` so that you can pass the value of "newline" in at run time. – Daniel Haley May 27 '14 at 17:54
2

Try this at the end of the line where you want the carriage return. It worked for me. 

<xsl:text><![CDATA[<br />]]></xsl:text>
Ken
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0

Here is an approach that uses a recursive template, which looks for &#10; in the string from the database and then outputs the substring before. If there is a substring after &#10; remaining, then the template calls itself until there is nothing left. In case &#10; is not present then the text is simply output.

Here is the template call (just replace @ActivityExtDescription with your database field):

<xsl:call-template name="MultilineTextOutput">
    <xsl:with-param name="text" select="@ActivityExtDescription" />
</xsl:call-template>

and here is the code for the template itself:

<xsl:template name="MultilineTextOutput">
<xsl:param name="text"/>
<xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="contains($text, '&#10;')">
        <xsl:variable name="text-before-first-break">
            <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text, '&#10;')" />
        </xsl:variable>
        <xsl:variable name="text-after-first-break">
            <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($text, '&#10;')" />
        </xsl:variable>

        <xsl:if test="not($text-before-first-break = '')">
            <xsl:value-of select="$text-before-first-break" /><br />
        </xsl:if>

        <xsl:if test="not($text-after-first-break = '')">
            <xsl:call-template name="MultilineTextOutput">
                <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text-after-first-break" />
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:value-of select="$text" /><br />
    </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

Works like a charm!!!

Agustin Meriles
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Jens Hupkau
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-1

I believe that you can use the xsl:text tag for this, as in

<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>

Chances are that by putting the closing tag on a line of its own, the newline is part of the literal text and outputted as such.

Frerich Raabe
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  • The string is held in the db and i tried adding but its printing the tag instead of getting a line break. – chugh97 Jun 19 '09 at 09:58
-1

I separated the values by Environment.NewLine and then used a pre tag in html to emulate the effect I was looking for

chugh97
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-1

This is the only solution that worked for me. Except I was replacing &#10; with \r\n

Philip Radvan
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