Menu

Generate CDATA with XQuery

Help
2007-02-28
2014-01-27
  • Steve Wardell

    Steve Wardell - 2007-02-28

    I am attempting to generate a CDATA section using XQuery with content within the CDATA section, but am not able to do this. What I am looking to return is something like:

    <b><![CDATA[<a></a>]]></b>

    Where <a></a> comes from an XPath value. However, I am not able to achieve this output. I have tried. Some things that I have tried:

    {"<![CDATA["}{ $pkg }{"]]>"}
    <![CDATA[{ $pkg }{"]]>

    However, these approaches do not generate the content that I expected as they either literally output { $pkg } or escape the > and < characters. Any assistance that can be provided would be appreciated.

    Thanks,
    Steve

     
    • Michael Kay

      Michael Kay - 2007-02-28

      CDATA sections are an artefact of serialized (lexical) XML, they have no representation in the XDM data model. This is because they are supposed to be used only as a convenient way to avoid escaping special characters, not as a way of conveying information.

      In your example

      <b><![CDATA[<a></a>]]></b>

      you say that <a></a> comes from an XPath value, but you don't say whether the value is a string of 7 characters, or an element node. The fact that you're putting it in CDATA suggests it's a string of 7 characters, but the fact that it looks suspiciously like XML markup suggests otherwise.

      If you put

      declare option saxon:output "cdata-section-elements=b";

      in the prolog, then the content of every b element will be serialized as CDATA. However, if the content is an element node, this won't work unless you serialize the element node first, which you can do as

      <b>{saxon:serialize($pkg)}</b>

      Probably a better approach - if you really need to produce this output - is to do some non-XQuery postprocessing of the output. Generate <?cdata-start?> and <?cdata-end?> in the result as processing instructions, and then post-process the serialized-output with a text manipulation tool such as sed or Perl.

       
    • Steve Wardell

      Steve Wardell - 2007-03-03

      Thank you so much. That was very helpful and met my needs. I was able to do it without post processing.

      Thanks,
      Steve

       
  • senthur selvi

    senthur selvi - 2014-01-27

    Hi
    I am also having such a requirement. When I used saxon namesapce as suggested I get unknown fuction error. Can you please help me on this. I am using Saxon B version.

    declare namespace saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/";
    let $x := <c>content</c>
    return saxon:serialize($x, "")

    Thanks
    Senthur