document() returning empty string

[Richard_Wood]

I use the document() function successfully and often in my Schematron work.
I am now trying to use it in an xsl:stylesheet to obtain a value from an external XML file, hosted on a REST web interface.
I have created a simple example to use in this post so that I can hopefully demonstrate all of the components of the process.
The actual use is significantly more complex, but I can't even get it to work in this simple case.
It appears that I am getting an empty string returned.

I associate a variable with the connect string for the REST API of the XML file.

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        <xsl:variable name="url">

            <xsl:value-of select="'http://my_company.com:8180/RegistryService/registry/XML/metaAttributeGroups'"/>

        </xsl:variable>

Then I create a variable to consume the XML using the document() function

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        <xsl:variable name="xmlDocument">

            <xsl:value-of select="document($url)"/>

        </xsl:variable>

Then I try to apply XPATH to the XML containing variable. This is what I do successfully in Schematron.

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        <xsl:variable name="firstProperty-1">

            <xsl:value-of select="$xmlDocument//entry[1]/item[1]/@value"/>

        </xsl:variable>

I read that the document() function tries to use a baseUrl. I suspect that has something to do with it but I don't know how to deal with that.
In an effort, I have tried one other format of the document() function which you will also see.

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        <xsl:variable name="firstProperty-2">

            <xsl:value-of select="document(//entry[1]/item[1]/@value,$url)"/>

        </xsl:variable>

I am including a clip of the XML file from which I am trying to obtain a value:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<registry xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 

xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://my_company.com/assets/registry/schema/registry.xsd" 

schemaVersion="1.1" identity="metaAttributeGroups" 

modified="2017-02-24T20:22:00Z">

  <entry status="stable" modified="2015-07-07T17:30:00Z" >

    <item key="rc" value="Y" />

    <item key="display" value="Preliminary" />

    <item key="property" value="cat1004:documentStatus" />

    <item key="description" value="Delivery Documents - Document Status" />

    <item key="label" value="Document Status (category-specific)" />

    <item key="supersededBy" value="" />

    <item key="content" value="Preliminary" />

  </entry>

The XPATH as applied in OxygenXML Editor:

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//entry[1]/item[1]/@value

And the XML formatted output returned in OxygenXML Editor, indicating that "Y" is what is returned from the XPATH:

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

<report xmlns="http://www.oxygenxml.com/ns/report">

    <incident>

    

        <description>Y</description>



        <xpath_location>/registry[1]/entry[1]/item[1]/@value</xpath_location>



        <systemID>http://my_company.com:8180/RegistryService/registry/XML/metaAttributeGroups</systemID>

        <location>

            <start>

                <line>6</line>

                <column>20</column>

            </start>

            <end>

                <line>6</line>

                <column>29</column>

            </end>

        </location>

    </incident>

</report>

I had to obfuscate a few things (company name for example) for privacy issues.

Here is the XML document, upon which I perform the XSL Transformation:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Document xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" >

	<status>test</status>

	<packageTimestamp>2016-05-05T20:45:00Z</packageTimestamp>

	<issued>2016-01-01T00:00:00Z</issued>

	<availableDate>2016-01-01T00:00:00Z</availableDate>

	<title>My Test Document</title>

</Document>

Here is the XSL Stylesheet that is used for the Transformation.
I output the URL for the external XML file, then two attempts to obtain an attribute from within the XML:

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

<xsl:stylesheet exclude-result-prefixes="xs File" version="2.0" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:File="java:java.io.File">

    <xsl:output encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes" xml:space="preserve"/>

    <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

    <xsl:template match="/">

        <xsl:apply-templates/>

    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="/Document">

        <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><!DOCTYPE html></xsl:text>

        <html>

            <head>

                <meta charset="utf-8"/>

                <style type="text/css">

                    body{

                        font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

                        color: black;

                        background: white;

                        font-size: 75%;

                        line-height: 1.2;

                        max-width: 75em;

                    }

                </style>

            </head>

            <body>

                    <div id="head">

                        <h1>

                            <xsl:apply-templates select="title"/>

                        </h1>

                    </div>

            </body>

        </html>

    </xsl:template>







    <xsl:template match="title">

        <xsl:variable name="url">

            <xsl:value-of select="'http://my_company.com:8180/RegistryService/registry/XML/metaAttributeGroups'"/>

        </xsl:variable>

        <xsl:variable name="xmlDocument">

            <xsl:value-of select="document($url)"/>

        </xsl:variable>

        <xsl:variable name="firstProperty-1">

            <xsl:value-of select="$xmlDocument//entry[1]/item[1]/@value"/>

        </xsl:variable>

        <xsl:variable name="firstProperty-2">

            <xsl:value-of select="document(//entry[1]/item[1]/@value,$url)"/>

        </xsl:variable>

        <p>

            Here is the url value: 

            <xsl:value-of select="$url"/>

            : that was the url value.

        </p>

        <p>

            Here is the first property value: 

            <xsl:value-of select="$firstProperty-1"/>

            : that was the first property value.

        </p>

        <p>

            Here is the first property value: 

            <xsl:value-of select="$firstProperty-2"/>

            : that was the first property value.

        </p>

    </xsl:template>





</xsl:stylesheet>

Here is the resulting HTML
As you can see, the URL displays fine, but neither of the attempts to display the attribute result in the expected display of: Y

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<!DOCTYPE html><html>

   <head>

      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

      <meta charset="utf-8"><style type="text/css">

                    body{

                        font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

                        color: black;

                        background: white;

                        font-size: 75%;

                        line-height: 1.2;

                        max-width: 75em;

                    }

                </style></head>

   <body>

      <div id="head">

         <h1>

            <p>

               Here is the url value: 

               http://my_company.com:8180/RegistryService/registry/XML/metaAttributeGroups

               : that was the url value.

               

            </p>

            <p>

               Here is the first property value: 

               

               : that was the first property value.

               

            </p>

            <p>

               Here is the first property value: 

               

               : that was the first property value.

               

            </p>

         </h1>

      </div>

   </body>

</html>

[adrian]

Hello,

Have you tried using?

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<xsl:variable name="xmlDocument" select="document($url)"/>

To clarify, xsl:value-of will return a single text node:

The xsl:value-of instruction is evaluated to construct a new text node; the result of the instruction is the newly constructed text node.

Regards,
Adrian

[Richard_Wood]

Adrian,

Thank-you for the reply and assistance
Not sure how I got that messed up now that I look back at my Schematron files with your tip in mind.

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<sch:let name="registryXmlFilename" value="document($path)"/>

Clearly I was doing a different and wrong thing in my stylesheet:

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        <xsl:variable name="xmlDocument">

            <xsl:value-of select="document($url)"/>

        </xsl:variable>

I guess I got wrapped up in the structure of setting a variable and was unable to see the difference.

Thanks very much, it corrected my issue.

Best Regards,

Rich Wood