[xmlsec] XSLT questions/issues

[Aleksey Sanin]

Hi, Ferrel!

First of all, I have to say that the LibXSLT (LibXML XSLT engine) author is
Daniel Veillard (http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT). I will forward your LibXSLT 
questions
to the LibXSLT related mailing list (xslt at gnome.org) since I am not 
familiar enough
with LibXSLT internals. You also can chech LibXSLT mailing list arcive:
        http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xslt/2002-July/thread.html
(I've seen some LibXSLT vs MSXML questions recently).

Regarding your first XPath question I would like to check it myself. If 
you don't mind, will
you send me the "file.xml", please?


Thanks,
Aleksey



Ferrell Moultrie (ISSAtlanta) wrote:

>Aleksey:
>  Thank you for your answers on LibXML2 and XMLSec versus Xerces. I've
>downloaded and built the libxml2 and xslt projects and have been running
>bits of our code through them. I've got three questions about differences
>between your xslt and the Xalan and/or MS xslt:
>
>1) your xpath expressions appear to require the apostrophe rather than the
>double-quote for delimiting data values, at least one the testXPath utility.
>I.e., 
>   testXPath -i file.xml /root//EndUser[Country=\'US\'] works, but,
>   testXPath -i file.xml /root//EndUser[Country=\"US\"] doesn't. 
>In the first case, the XPath parse tree shows:
>         EQUAL =
>           COLLECT  'attributes' 'name' 'node' Country
>             NODE
>           ELEM Object is a string : US
>             COLLECT  'attributes' 'name' 'node' Country
>               NODE
>In the second case, it shows:
>         EQUAL =
>           COLLECT  'attributes' 'name' 'node' Country
>             NODE
>           COLLECT  'child' 'name' 'node' US
>             NODE
>I believe the backslash-quoting of the apostrophe or double-quote should
>pass through the ksh variant I'm running.
>
>2) My XSLT templates have explicit support for copying XML comments through
>to the output. This works with MSXML and Xalan but comments get dropped with
>you XSLT. Is this a configuration or other option or does your DOM just
>ignore comments (as it's allowed to do, but not required to do, by the spec
>-- but which is inconvenient from my perspective). 
>
>3) Your XSLT appears to want an explicit root match as the first template.
>I.e., 
>
><xsl:template match='/'>
>        <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
></xsl:template>
>
><xsl:template match='/Keys'>
>        <xsl:copy>
>        <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
>        </xsl:copy>
></xsl:template>
>
>... other templates ...
>
><xsl:template match="@* | node()" priority="-10">
>        <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
></xsl:template>
>
>And with input XML whose root begins:
><Keys>
> ... other XML
>
>Your XSLT, MSXSL, and Xalan XSLT all process the above script and generate
>essentially the same output. If I delete the first three lines however (the
>match='/'), then MSXSL and Xalan are both still happy but your XSLT matches
>"/" against the final template, i.e., the verbose output shows:
>...
>Registering global variables from transform2.xsl
>xsltProcessOneNode: applying template '@* | node()' for /
>xsltCopyOf: select .
>xsltCopyOf: result is a node set
>
>What is the reasoning behind this behavioral difference? The MSXSL/Xalan
>behavior appears to be correct as I read the books and samples I have but
>I'm far from an expert in XSLT so what's the cause of the incompatibility
>here?
>
>Sorry for so many questions but I'm trying to figure out how much work it
>would be to port a portion of our apps to using libxml2 and these are the
>issues that popped out with some initial compatibility testing.
>
>Thanks!!!
>  Ferrell
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>Ferrell Moultrie
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>  
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