Including a plain text file with XSLT 1.0

Question

How can I include the content of a plain text file in a result document from within an XSLT 1.0 stylesheet? I.e., just like document(), but without parsing it:

<xsl:value-of select="magic-method-to-include-plaintext(@xlink_href)" />

I am almost sure, that this doesn't work without extension, because:

1. there is a special XPath function defined for this in XSLT/XPath 2.0:

   <xsl:value-of select="unparsed-text(@xlink:href, 'UTF-8')"/>
   

2. the XSLT FAQ only lists a Java extension to achieve this via EXSLT

However, perhaps I missed something?

Answer 1

However, perhaps I missed something?

No, XSLT 1.0 cannot access the content of a non-xml text file without using an extension function.

One way around this is to pass the string as a global parameter to the transformation.