xslt - How can I remove whitespace when declaring an XSL variable?

Question

I have to create an XSL variable with a choose in it. Like the following:

<xsl:variable name="grid_position">
  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="count(/Element) &gt;= 1">
      inside
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
      outside
    </xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

And later in my code, I do an xsl if:

<xsl:if test="$grid_position = 'inside'">
   {...code...}
</xsl:if>

Problem is that my variable is never = 'inside' because of the line breaks and indent. How can I remove whitespaces from my variable? I know I can remove it using disable-output-escaping="yes" when I use it in a xsl:copy-of, but it's not working on the xsl:variable tag. So how can I remove those whitespace and line breaks?

Answer 1

That's what <xsl:text> is for:

<xsl:variable name="grid_position">
  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="count(/Element) &gt;= 1">
      <xsl:text>inside</xsl:text>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:text>outside</xsl:text>
    </xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

It allows you to structure your code and control whitespace at the same time.

In fact, you should stay clear of text nodes in XSL that are not wrapped in <xsl:text> to avoid these kinds of bugs in the future, too (i.e. when code gets re-formatted or re-factored later).

For simple cases, like in your sample, doing what Jim Garrison suggests is also an option.

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As an aside, testing for the existence of an element with count() is superfluous. Selecting it is enough, since the empty node-set evaluates to false.

<xsl:when test="/Element">