XSL if test starts-with

Question

Given this piece of XML

<dc:date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</dc:date>
<dc:date>2012-07-04</dc:date>

I should need with XSL to output only the year of the string not starting with info:eu-repo. I'm trying this way, but it doesn't work. I'm wrong with the for-each?

<xsl:if test="not(starts-with('dc:date', 'info:eu-repo'))">
                <xsl:for-each select="dc:date">
                    <publicationYear>
                        <xsl:variable name="date" select="."/>
                        <xsl:value-of select="substring($date, 0, 5)"/>
                    </publicationYear>
                </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:if>

Answer 1

I guess you don't need ' in your start-with query, and you may want to iterate over dates slightly differently:

    <xsl:for-each select="dc:date">
         <xsl:variable name="date" select="."/>
         <xsl:if test="not(starts-with($date, 'info:eu-repo'))">
                <publicationYear>
                    <xsl:value-of select="substring($date, 0, 5)"/>
                </publicationYear>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:for-each>

Answer 2

You could also use a template-match to get what you want, for example:

<xsl:template match="date[not(starts-with(.,'info:eu-repo'))]">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>

I have this input XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<list>
<date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</date>
<date>2012-07-04</date>
</list>

and apply this XSLT to it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="1.0">
<xsl:template match="text() | @*"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:template> 

<xsl:template match="date[not(starts-with(.,'info:eu-repo'))]">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

and I get this output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>2012-07-04

Best regards, Peter

Answer 3

Use (assuming the provided XML fragment is elements that are children of the current node and there is only one element with the desired property):

substring-before(*[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))], '-')

XSLT - based verification:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="/*">
     <xsl:copy-of select=
     "substring-before(*[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))], '-') "/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

When this transformation is applied to the following XML document (the provided fragment wrapped in a single top element and the namespace declared):

<t xmlns:dc="some:dc">
    <dc:date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</dc:date>
    <dc:date>2012-07-04</dc:date>
</t>

the XPath expression is evaluated off the top element and the result of this evaluation is copied to the output:

2012

---

II. More than one element with the desired property:

In this case It isn't possible to produce the desired data with a single XPath 1.0 expression.

This XSLT transformation:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="*[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))]/text()">
     <xsl:copy-of select="substring-before(., '-') "/>
==============  
 </xsl:template>
 <xsl:template match="text()"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on this XML document:

<t xmlns:dc="some:dc">
    <dc:date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</dc:date>
    <dc:date>2012-07-04</dc:date>
    <dc:date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</dc:date>
    <dc:date>2011-07-05</dc:date>
</t>

produces the wanted, correct result:

2012
==============  
 2011
==============  

---

III. XPath 2.0 one-liner

*[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))]/substring-before(., '-')

When this XPath 2.0 expression is evaluated off the top element of the last XML document (nearest above), the wanted years are produced:

2012 2011

XSLT 2.0 - based verification:

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output method="text"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="/*">
  <xsl:sequence select=
   "*[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))]/substring-before(., '-')"/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

When this transformation is applied on the last XML document, the XPath expression is evaluated and the result of this evaluation is copied to the output:

2012 2011

---

IV. The Most General and Difficult case:

Now, let's have this XML document:

<t xmlns:dc="some:dc">
    <dc:date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</dc:date>
    <dc:date>2012-07-04</dc:date>
    <dc:date>info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2013-06-12</dc:date>
    <dc:date>2011-07-05</dc:date>
    <dc:date>*/date/embargoEnd/2014-06-12</dc:date>
</t>

We still want to get the year part of all dc:date elements whose string value doesn't start with 'info:eu-repo'. However none of the previous solutions work correctly with the last dc:date element above.

Remarkably, the wanted data can still be produced by a single XPAth 2.0 expression:

for $s in
      *[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))]/tokenize(.,'/')[last()]
     return
       substring-before($s, '-')

When this expression is evaluated off the top element of the above XML document, the wanted, correct result is produced:

2012 2011 2014

And this is the XSLT 2.0 - based verification:

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output method="text"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="/*">
  <xsl:sequence select=
   "for $s in
      *[not(starts-with(., 'info:eu-repo'))]/tokenize(.,'/')[last()]
     return
       substring-before($s, '-')
   "/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>