is numerical and is alpha/numerical in XPath or XSL

Question

Hi!

I am wondering if it is possible to use XPath or XSL to determine if a XML node value is numerical or alpha/numerical. (It is user entered data.. so it could be either..)

I was searching for some sort of function in XPath to do this.. but I couldn't find any.

for example:

<example>
    <test1 attribute="123">12dfffg23</test1>
    <test2 attribute="a34">123456</test2>
</example>

I need to test node content and attibutes:

/example/test1
/example/test1/@attribute
/example/test2
/example/test2/@attribute

And I would expect the following to be numerical:

/example/test1/@attribute
/example/test2

And I would expect the following to be alpha/numerical:

/example/test1
/example/test2/@attribute

Is it possible to do this with a function in XPath or XSL?

Thanks! :D

Answer 1

In XPath 1.0 use this to test whether a given string contains a number:

number(someString) = number(someString)

Use this to test whether a given string consists only of alphanumeric characters (letters or digits):

not(translate(someString, $alphabetLowerAndUpperAndDigits, ''))

where $alphabetLowerAndUpperAndDigitscan be substituted with all lowercase and uppercase letters and the digits (0-9) from the alphabet (for the latin alphabet this is:

'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789'

In XPath 2.0: (all of the above plus)

matches(someString, '^[\c|\d]+$')