Disable output escaping in transformations

2020-10-15

This article shows how to disable output escaping in transformations.

Original product version: Microsoft XML
Original KB number: 315717

Summary

This step-by-step article describes how to disable output escaping of characters such as < and > in an XML style sheet transformation.

To guarantee that any XSL transformation output is a well-formed document, the angle bracket characters (< and >) are transformed by default into < and > character sequences. However, sometimes this behavior is not desirable, such as when you want to generate a Document Type Declaration (DTD) in the output document:

<!DOCTYPE StaffMember [
 <!ELEMENT StaffMember (#PCDATA)>
]>

Requirements

The following list outlines the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that are required:

Microsoft XML version 3.0 or later

This article assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:
XML and XSL transformations and the MSXML component
Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript)
XML Document Object Model (DOM)

Create an XML Document and an XSL Style Sheet

Open a text editor such as Notepad, and then paste the following XML in a document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Transform.xsl"?>
<Employee>
    <Name>Chris</Name>
</Employee>

Save this file as Source.xml.

Create a new file in your text editor, and then paste the following XSL style sheet in the file.

Note

The disable-output-escaping="yes" attribute in the first xsl:value-of tag:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet 
 version="1.0" 
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="Employee">
        <xsl:value-of 
         disable-output-escaping="yes"
         select="concat('&lt;!DOCTYPE StaffMember [',
         '&lt;!ELEMENT StaffMember (#PCDATA)&gt;',
         ']&gt;')" />
        <StaffMember>
            <xsl:value-of select="Name"/>
        </StaffMember>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Save this file as Transform.xsl in the same folder as the XML document that you created.

Use Windows Script to Execute the Style Sheet

Create a new file in your text editor, and then paste the following script in the file: Option Explicit

Dim objSource
Dim objTransform
Dim sResult

Set objSource = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
objSource.async = False
objSource.load "Source.xml"

Set objTransform = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
objTransform.async = False
objTransform.load "Transform.xsl"

sResult = objSource.TransformNode(objTransform.documentElement)

WScript.Echo sResult

Save this file as Xform.vbs in the same folder as the XML document and the XSL style sheet that you created.

Test the Procedure

Open a command prompt, and then locate the folder that contains your three files.
Type cscript xform.vbs at the command prompt.

The output from the transformation is displayed as follows on the screen:

<!DOCTYPE StaffMember [<!ELEMENT StaffMember (#PCDATA)>]>
<StaffMember>Chris</StaffMember>

Troubleshooting

Be careful when you use the disable-output-escaping attribute. If the generated < and > characters do not match up, the output document will not be well-formed XML. The transformNodeToObject method requires the result to be well formed, so the method might not complete if disable-output-escaping is used.

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