Converting an integer value to a repeating character

Question

When my XSL stylesheets come across this node:

<node attribute="3"/> 

... he should convert it to this node:

 <node attribute="***"/> 

My template matches the attribute and recreates it, but I do not know how to set the value: the '*' symbol is repeated as many times as the value of the original attribute.

 <xsl:template match="node/@attribute"> <xsl:variable name="repeat" select="."/> <xsl:attribute name="attribute"> <!-- What goes here? I think I can do something with $repeat... --> </xsl:attribute> </xsl:template> 

Thanks!

Answer 1

A rather dirty but pragmatic approach would be to make a call about what the largest number you expect to see in attribute , then use

 substring("****...", 1, $repeat) 

where you have as many * in this line as the maximum number you expect. But I hope there is something better!

Answer 2

General, recursive solution (XSLT 1.0):

 <xsl:template name="RepeatString"> <xsl:param name="string" select="''" /> <xsl:param name="times" select="1" /> <xsl:if test="number($times) &gt; 0"> <xsl:value-of select="$string" /> <xsl:call-template name="RepeatString"> <xsl:with-param name="string" select="$string" /> <xsl:with-param name="times" select="$times - 1" /> </xsl:call-template> </xsl:if> </xsl:template> 

Call as:

 <xsl:attribute name="attribute"> <xsl:call-template name="RepeatString"> <xsl:with-param name="string" select="'*'" /> <xsl:with-param name="times" select="." /> </xsl:call-template> </xsl:attribute> 

Answer 3

Adding @AakashM and @Tomalak to the two nice answers , this is done naturally in XSLT 2.0 :

Convert XSLT 2.0 :

 <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/> <xsl:template match="node()|@*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="@attribute"> <xsl:attribute name="{name()}"> <xsl:for-each select="1 to ."> <xsl:value-of select="'*'"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:attribute> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

when applied to the provided XML document :

 <node attribute="3"/> 

creates the desired result :

 <node attribute="***"/> 

Note how the XPath 2.0 to statement is used in the <xsl:for-each> statement.