Adding an attribute to a node which is a CDATA in XSLT

Question

I am trying to add an attribute to a node which is part of a CDATA. My XML is

 <documents>
   <document id="1234">
    <field name="CDATA" value="bill"><![CDATA[<bill name="xxx" age="12" />]]> </field>
   </document>
 </documents>

The result xml should be

<docs>
  <doc>
   <bill name="xxx" age="12" id="1234" />
  </doc>
</docs>

The id attribute in the document node should be added as an attribute to the node inside the CDATA.

I was able to get the CDATA value as field[@name='CDATA'] but I was not sure how to add the attribute of document to the cdata..

Can anyone please suggest me how to do this or point me in the right direction?

a CDATA section is just a part of a text node. As such it only contains text and no nodes (even if the text seems the same as the textual serialization of a node). Therefore, what you want isn't possible in pure XSLT 1.0 and 2.0, unless you also have an XML parser written in XSLT. In XSLT 3.0/XPath 3.0 (still drafts) there might be a function: parse-xml() that can be used to parse the text and create from it an XML document/fragment: w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-30/#func-parse-xml — Dimitre Novatchev
– Dimitre Novatchev, Commented Aug 7, 2012 at 2:08

Dimitre Novatchev · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-07 02:09:47Z

1

A CDATA section is just a part of a text node.

As such it only contains text and no nodes (even if the text seems the same as the textual serialization of a node).

Therefore, what you want isn't possible in pure XSLT 1.0 and 2.0, unless you also have an XML parser written in XSLT.

In XSLT 3.0/XPath 3.0 (still drafts) there might be a function: parse-xml() that can be used to parse the text and create from it an XML document/fragment:

answered Aug 7, 2012 at 2:09

Dimitre Novatchev

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Michael Kay · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-07 05:37:22Z

1

CDATA means "the stuff in here is to be treated as plain text even if it looks like markup". CDATA is an explicit instruction to the parser to ignore markup within the content. That is the only purpose of the CDATA tags. Therefore, there are no nodes inside a CDATA section by definition.

answered Aug 7, 2012 at 5:37

Michael Kay

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