Cannot get xslt to output an (&) even after escaping the character

Question

I am trying to create a query string of variable assignments separated by the & symbol (ex: \"var1=x&var2=y&...\"). I plan to pass this

Answer 1

If you are trying to produce an XML file as output, you will want to produce & (as & on it's own is invalid XML). If you are just producing a string then you should set the output mode of the stylesheet to text by including the following as a child of the xsl:stylesheet

<xsl:output method="text"/>

This will prevent the stylesheet from escaping things and <xsl:value-of select="'&amp;'" /> should produce &.

Answer 2

You can combine disable-output-escaping with a CDATA section. Try this:

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[&]]></xsl:text>

Answer 3

Just replace & with

<![CDATA[&]]>

in the data. EX: Data XML

<title>Empire <![CDATA[&]]> Burlesque</title>

XSLT tag:

<xsl:value-of select="title" />

Output: Empire & Burlesque

Answer 4

Use disable-output-escaping="yes" in your value-of tag

Answer 5

You should note, that you can use disable-output-escaping within the value of node or string/text like:

<xsl:value-of select="/node/here" disable-output-escaping="yes" />

or

<xsl:value-of select="'&amp;'" disable-output-escaping="yes" />
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">Texas A&amp;M</xsl:text>

Note the single quotes in the xsl:value-of.

However you cannot use disable-output-escaping on attributes. I know it's completely messed up but, that's the way things are in XSLT 1.0. So the following will NOT work:

<xsl:value-of select="/node/here/@ttribute" disable-output-escaping="yes" />

Because in the fine print is the quote:

Thus, it is an error to disable output escaping for an <xsl:value-of /> or <xsl:text /> element that is used to generate the string-value of a comment, processing instruction or attribute node;

emphasis mine.

Taken from: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#disable-output-escaping

Answer 6

Using the disable-output-escaping attribute (a boolean) is probably the easiest way of accomplishing this. Notice that you can use this not only on <xsl:value-of/> but also with <xsl:text>, which might be cleaner, depending on your specific case.

Here's the relevant part of the specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#disable-output-escaping