Convert string into XML structure XSLT - xslt

Question

I am getting an input structure as something like this
<ParameterSet>2|InterfaceMethod|EQ|I|GenericQuery|NIL</ParameterSet>
<ParameterSet>1|TargetFilename|EQ|I|VendorMaster|NIL</ParameterSet>
the output should look something like below
<Parameter>
<Expression>2</Expression>
<Parametername>InterfaceMethod</Parametername>
<Parameter_Opt>EQ</Parameter_Opt>
<Parameter_Sign>I</Parameter_Sign>
<Range_Low_Value>GenericQuery</Range_Low_Value>
<Range_High_Value>NIL</Range_High_Value>
</Parameter>
<Parameter>
<Expression>1</Expression>
<Parametername>TargetFilename</Parametername>
<Parameter_Opt>EQ</Parameter_Opt>
<Parameter_Sign>I</Parameter_Sign>
<Range_Low_Value>VendorMaster</Range_Low_Value>
<Range_High_Value>NIL</Range_High_Value>
</Parameter>
My Problem is the tag gets converted to <ParameterSet&gt and am not able to use foreach when I write into another repetitive structure.
Can anyone provide some sample code.

Answer 1

The operation you are looking for - turning lexical XML into a tree of nodes - is called parsing. Some XSLT processors have an extension function, e.g. saxon:parse(), that does this (in XSLT 3.0 it's available out-of-the-box as fn:parse-xml()). With other processors, you may be able to write your own extension function by calling out to Java or Javascript.

Answer 2

Your input data isn't XML, possibly it's encoded (escaped) XML. So, you need to turn it into well-formed XML, in other words perform pre-processing. Then apply XSL transform.

Answer 3

xslt is good at rearranging xml into different xml, not at changing non-xml into xml. While you could do this with xslt using lots of nested substring-before or the like, it will be much much easier if you can run it through sed or something first to create xml out of the |-delimited string.

Answer 4

Thanks everyone for your inputs, I wanted this solution in XSLT as that is only processor I had and also it is running on version 1.0. Got it working with the code below
<xsl:variable name="TempArea">
<ParameterSet>2|InterfaceMethod|EQ|I|GenericQuery|NIL</ParameterSet>
<ParameterSet>1|TargetFilename|EQ|I|VendorMaster|NIL</ParameterSet>
<ParameterSet>1|CompanyCode|EQ|I|4900|NIL</ParameterSet></xsl:when>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:call-template name="for.loop.Parameters">
<xsl:with-param name="sourceNodes" select="substring-after($TempArea,'<ParameterSet>')"/>
</xsl:call-template>
<xsl:template name="for.loop.Parameters">
<xsl:param name="sourceNodes"/>
<xsl:variable name="temp">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="string-length($sourceNodes) > '0'">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before($sourceNodes,'</ParameterSet>')"/>
</xsl:when>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Expression" select="substring-before($temp, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="remaining" select="substring-after($temp, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="Name" select="substring-before($remaining, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="remainingNext" select="substring-after($remaining, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="Option" select="substring-before($remainingNext, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="remainingNext1" select="substring-after($remainingNext, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="Sign" select="substring-before($remainingNext1, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="remainingNext2" select="substring-after($remainingNext1, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="LowValue" select="substring-before($remainingNext2, '|')"/>
<xsl:variable name="HighValue" select="substring-after($remainingNext2, '|')"/>
<Parameter>
<Expression>
<xsl:value-of select="$Expression"/>
</Expression>
<Parametername>
<xsl:value-of select="$Name"/>
</Parametername>
<Parameter_Opt>
<xsl:value-of select="$Option"/>
</Parameter_Opt>
<Parameter_Sign>
<xsl:value-of select="$Sign"/>
</Parameter_Sign>
<Range_Low_Value>
<xsl:value-of select="$LowValue"/>
</Range_Low_Value>
<Range_High_Value>
<xsl:value-of select="$HighValue"/>
</Range_High_Value>
</Parameter>
<xsl:variable name="test">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after($sourceNodes,'</ParameterSet>')"/>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:if test="string-length($test)> 1 ">
<xsl:call-template name="for.loop.Parameters">
<xsl:with-param name="sourceNodes">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after($test,'<ParameterSet>')"/>
</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>