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182 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
182 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "XSLT string functions: complete reference with examples"
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description: "Complete guide to XSLT and XPath string functions: substring, contains, replace, tokenize, normalize-space and more. With practical examples."
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date: 2025-03-28T00:00:00Z
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tags: ["xslt", "xpath", "strings", "functions"]
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---
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String manipulation is one of the most common tasks in XSLT. Whether you are formatting output, parsing codes, or normalising values from external systems, XPath provides a rich set of string functions. This reference covers the most useful ones with examples you can run in [XSLT Playground](https://xsltplayground.com).
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## Basic string functions (XSLT 1.0+)
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### string-length
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Returns the number of characters in a string.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="string-length('hello')"/> <!-- 5 -->
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<xsl:value-of select="string-length(title)"/> <!-- length of title element text -->
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```
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### substring
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Extracts a portion of a string. Arguments: string, start position (1-based), optional length.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="substring('ABCDEF', 2, 3)"/> <!-- BCD -->
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<xsl:value-of select="substring('ABCDEF', 4)"/> <!-- DEF -->
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```
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### substring-before and substring-after
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Split a string on a delimiter.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="substring-before('2024-11-28', '-')"/> <!-- 2024 -->
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<xsl:value-of select="substring-after('user@example.com', '@')"/> <!-- example.com -->
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```
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### contains, starts-with, ends-with
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Test membership without extracting.
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```xml
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<xsl:if test="contains(email, '@')">...</xsl:if>
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<xsl:if test="starts-with(code, 'EUR')">...</xsl:if>
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<!-- ends-with requires XSLT 2.0+ -->
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<xsl:if test="ends-with(filename, '.xml')">...</xsl:if>
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```
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### concat
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Joins strings together. Takes any number of arguments.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="concat(firstname, ' ', lastname)"/>
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<xsl:value-of select="concat('ID-', format-number(id, '0000'))"/>
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```
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### normalize-space
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Strips leading and trailing whitespace, and collapses internal whitespace to single spaces. Essential for cleaning values from XML sources.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(description)"/>
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```
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### translate
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Replaces characters one-for-one. Useful for simple case conversion or character removal.
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```xml
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<!-- uppercase (XSLT 1.0 approach) -->
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<xsl:value-of select="translate(name, 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz', 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ')"/>
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<!-- remove digits -->
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<xsl:value-of select="translate(code, '0123456789', '')"/>
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```
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## Advanced string functions (XSLT 2.0+)
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### upper-case and lower-case
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No longer need `translate` for case conversion.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="upper-case(name)"/>
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<xsl:value-of select="lower-case(status)"/>
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```
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### replace
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Regex-based substitution. Much more powerful than `translate`.
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```xml
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<!-- remove all non-digits -->
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<xsl:value-of select="replace(phone, '[^0-9]', '')"/>
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<!-- normalise whitespace to single space -->
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<xsl:value-of select="replace(description, '\s+', ' ')"/>
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<!-- mask last 4 digits of card number -->
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<xsl:value-of select="replace(card, '\d(?=\d{4})', '*')"/>
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```
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### matches
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Tests a string against a regex.
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```xml
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<xsl:if test="matches(email, '^[^@]+@[^@]+\.[^@]+$')">
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<!-- valid-looking email -->
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</xsl:if>
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```
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### tokenize
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Splits a string into a sequence using a regex delimiter. Returns a sequence of strings.
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```xml
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<!-- split CSV line -->
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<xsl:for-each select="tokenize(csv-line, ',')">
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<item><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/></item>
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</xsl:for-each>
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<!-- split on any whitespace -->
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<xsl:variable name="words" select="tokenize(sentence, '\s+')"/>
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<xsl:value-of select="count($words)"/> <!-- word count -->
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```
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### string-join
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The inverse of `tokenize`. Joins a sequence with a separator.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="string-join(//tag/text(), ', ')"/>
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<!-- "xml, xslt, saxon" -->
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```
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### format-number
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Formats a number as a string with a picture pattern.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="format-number(1234567.89, '#,##0.00')"/>
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<!-- 1,234,567.89 -->
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<xsl:value-of select="format-number(0.175, '0.00%')"/>
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<!-- 17.50% -->
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```
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### format-date and format-dateTime
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Format xs:date and xs:dateTime values using picture strings.
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="format-date(xs:date('2024-11-28'), '[D01]/[M01]/[Y]')"/>
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<!-- 28/11/2024 -->
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<xsl:value-of select="format-dateTime(current-dateTime(), '[H01]:[m01]:[s01]')"/>
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<!-- 14:35:22 -->
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```
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## Practical patterns
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**Extract domain from URL:**
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```xml
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<xsl:variable name="after-proto" select="substring-after(url, '//')"/>
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<xsl:value-of select="substring-before($after-proto, '/')"/>
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```
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**Pad a number with leading zeros:**
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```xml
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<xsl:value-of select="format-number(id, '000000')"/>
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```
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**Check if a node text is numeric:**
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```xml
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<xsl:if test="matches(normalize-space(amount), '^\d+(\.\d+)?$')">
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```
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All of these work in [XSLT Playground](https://xsltplayground.com). Set the version to 2.0 or 3.0 for the functions that require it.
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