Accessing XSL Variable with Classic ASP Code?

Question

I am curious if there is anyway to access a XSL variable's data from ASP code. First some background information...

I have an ASPX page that is pulling data from an XML file, and using a separate classic ASP page for the "Response.write(mm_xsl.Transform())" aspect.

In the classic ASP page that dictates the HTML output to the viewer, I have XSL variables used to print certain data from the XML file. For example I use this code to initialize the variable:

<xsl:variable name="age" select="person/Age" />

And then this code to print/echo the variable:

{$age}

Let's say the value of the variable was 50. Is there anyway I can somehow pass "50" into an ASP variable? I realize I might need to get creative and somehow retrieve "50" from the markup, similar to client-side DOM parsing. Is there any server-side parsing method similar to this?

Any other ideas? Any tips or relevant links are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Can't you just execute the same select you have in your xsl:variable statement in VBScript inline on the Classic Asp page?

Assuming your XML Document is called mm_doc you could try something like:

  dim age
  age = mm_doc.selectSingleNode("person/Age").text

and now you have an age variable with the same contents from your Xml Document.

Answer 2

You need to look into the MSXML documentation how to get the result of the transformation as a string (from either VBScript or JavaScript). I believe this is possible.

Then your XSLT transformation will just output the value of the variable (and nothing else).

Answer 3

As Dmitre said, you need to use MSXML, which is the XML plugin to ASP.

Tutorials and documentation are available at:

• http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/10
• http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/XML/MSXML-Tutorial/