xdocs/sources/xsltc/xsl_if_design.xml

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<!-- $Id$ -->
  <s1 title="&lt;xsl:if&gt;">

  <s2 title="Contents">
  <ul>
    <li><link anchor="functionality">Functionality</link></li>
    <li><link anchor="implementation">Implementation</link></li>    
  </ul>
  </s2>

  <anchor name="functionality"/>
  <s2 title="Functionality">

  <p>This element is cruical to XSL processing, but still very simple both in
  its use and implementation. The element is used like this:</p><source>
  &lt;xsl:if test="contains($the-world,'Elvis')">
    &lt;xsl:message>Elvis is still alive!&lt;/xsl:message>
  &lt;/xsl:if></source>

  <p>The element's contents will only be executed if the test succeeds. There
  is no <code>&lt;xsl:else&gt;</code> element. One has to use either several
  <code>&lt;xsl:if&gt;</code>-elements or use a choose-element.</p>

  </s2>

  <anchor name="implementation"/>
  <s2 title="Implementation">

  <p>The basic implementation is very simple:</p>
  <ul>
    <li>execute the expression from the 'test'-attribute</li>
    <li>evaluate the resulting boolean value</li>
    <li>ignore the element contents if the value is 'false'</li>
    <li>otherwise execute the element contents</li>
  </ul>

  <p>There is onle type of function call that makes this a bit more complicated.
  The <code>function-available()</code> and <code>element-available()</code>
  function calls can be used to test for extension elements and functions. A
  very common use for these is to encapsulate all references to extension
  elements inside an <code>&lt;xsl:if&gt;</code> element and test for the
  existance of this element before attempting to use it. XSLTC has to support
  this. Otherwise we may risk either outputting erronuous error or warning
  messages about acessing non-existing elements, or even worse, compiling in
  calls to non-existing methods in the translet, causing the JVM's verifier to
  prevent the translet from being loaded.</p>

  <p>The <code>function-available()</code> and <code>element-available()</code>
  functions have been updated to perform an evaluation at compile-time, so that
  the <code>If</code> class can know wether to compile in calls to extensions or
  not. This is possible because both functions take only literal expressions as
  parameters. See the <code>getResult()</code> methods of the
  <code>FunctionAvailableCall</code> and <code>ElementAvailableCall</code>
  classes for details.</p>

  </s2>

</s1>