Execute Xpath Passed In As A String

[longrun]

Hai all,I have the following problem to solve: The users of my application can specify an xpath like e.g.format-date(current-date(),'[D]/[M]/[Y]', 'en', (), ())this xpath is caught in an xslt file as just being a string (the user could also have typed in a string and then I need this string for sure), but I want this 'string' to be evaluated...so it shoould result in 18/11/2009 instead of the string 'format-date(current-date(),'[D]/[M]/[Y]', 'en', (), ())'So my question is, does anybody know how I execute this xpath if it comes to my function as a string...? With xpath function 'eval' or 'exec' or so??Best regards,longrun

[boen_robot]

If the XSLT processor supports it, you can use the dyn:evaluate() EXSLT function. You can see a list of processors that support this at the bottom of the page.

[Martin Honnen]

That is only possible with an extension function. Your expression suggests you use XSLT/XPath 2.0 so below is an XSLT 2.0 stylesheet showing how to solve the problem with Saxon 9 and with AltovaXML tools:

<xsl:stylesheet  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"  version="2.0"  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"  xmlns:saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/"  xmlns:altova="http://www.altova.com/xslt-extensions"  exclude-result-prefixes="xsd saxon altova">      <xsl:template match="test">	<xsl:choose>	  <xsl:when test="function-available('saxon:evaluate')">		<xsl:value-of select="saxon:evaluate(.)"/>	  </xsl:when>	  <xsl:when test="function-available('altova:evaluate')">		<xsl:value-of select="altova:evaluate(.)"/>	  </xsl:when>	</xsl:choose>  </xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>

It assumes the element containing the XPath expression is named 'test'. Note that saxon:evaluate is not supported by the Saxon 9.2 Home Edition, only by the Professional and Enterprise edition. It is however supported by the Saxon 9.1 B.