XSLT 1.0 upper-case() & lower-case()

In the last article, we looked at using XSLT "includes", and along the way, encountered a requirement to convert a string to uppercase in XSLT 1.0.

XSLT 2.0 users have the luxury of upper-case() & lower-case(), but oddly, functions for converting characters to upper and lowercase are not available in XSLT 1.0.

XSLT isnt the mother language of most Siebel professionals, or if you dont use it everyday, youre going to get rusty (i know i am), so this walkthrough should appeal to a lot of readers.

Lets take a look at our XSLT functions file from last time
<!--XSLTfunctions.xslt-->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
    <xsl:variable name="smallcase" select="'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'" /> 
    <xsl:variable name="uppercase" select="'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'" /> 
    <xsl:template name="FORMATBOOLEAN">
        <xsl:param name="BooleanChar"/>
        <xsl:choose>             
            <xsl:when test="translate($BooleanChar, $smallcase, $uppercase)='Y'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="translate($BooleanChar, $smallcase, $uppercase)='YES'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="translate($BooleanChar, $smallcase, $uppercase)='TRUE'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>false</xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


It works by taking a string value, converting it to uppercase and comparing it to 3 static values, but with a little bit of effort, we can optimise it to be more efficient. Instead of calling translate on the same variable 3 times to get the same result. We will engineer it so its only called once.

We start by creating our own custom UPPER and LOWER functions
    <xsl:template name="UPPER">
        <xsl:param name="text"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="translate($text, $smallcase, $uppercase)"/>
    </xsl:template>
    
    <xsl:template name="LOWER">
        <xsl:param name="text"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="translate($text, $uppercase, $smallcase)"/>
    </xsl:template>   


In XSLT we cannot reassign the value of a variable once it is declared, so we create a new variable called $BooleanCharUPPER,and call the UPPER function from inside our FORMATBOOLEAN function and return the result.
    <xsl:template name="FORMATBOOLEAN">
        <xsl:param name="BooleanChar"/>

        <xsl:variable name="BooleanCharUPPER">
            <xsl:call-template name="UPPER">
                <xsl:with-param name="text">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$BooleanChar"/>
                </xsl:with-param>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:variable>  
  
    </xsl:template>


Finally we evaluate the $BooleanCharUPPER against our static values.
        <xsl:choose>             
            <xsl:when test="$BooleanCharUPPER='Y'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="$BooleanCharUPPER='YES'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="$BooleanCharUPPER='TRUE'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>false</xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>  


We can now use these functions in any XSLT, where we've included them
        <xsl:call-template name="UPPER">
            <xsl:with-param name="text">
                <xsl:text>bad boys blue</xsl:text> 
            </xsl:with-param>
        </xsl:call-template>

Result: BAD BOYS BLUE

        <xsl:call-template name="LOWER">
            <xsl:with-param name="text">
                <xsl:text>BAD BOYS BLUE</xsl:text>
            </xsl:with-param>
        </xsl:call-template>

Result: bad boys blue

Here is the final XSLTFunctions.xsl file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
  
    <xsl:variable name="smallcase" select="'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'" /> 
    <xsl:variable name="uppercase" select="'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'" /> 
    
    <xsl:template name="UPPER">
        <xsl:param name="text"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="translate($text, $smallcase, $uppercase)"/>
    </xsl:template>
    
    <xsl:template name="LOWER">
        <xsl:param name="text"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="translate($text, $uppercase, $smallcase)"/>
    </xsl:template>   
    
    <xsl:template name="FORMATBOOLEAN">
        <xsl:param name="BooleanChar"/>
        <xsl:variable name="BooleanCharUPPER">
            <xsl:call-template name="UPPER">
                <xsl:with-param name="text">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$BooleanChar"/>
                </xsl:with-param>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:variable>        
        <xsl:choose>             
            <xsl:when test="$BooleanCharUPPER='Y'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="$BooleanCharUPPER='YES'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="$BooleanCharUPPER='TRUE'">true</xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>false</xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>        
    </xsl:template>
   
</xsl:stylesheet>


Bad Boys Blue, are a eurodance group that came to fame around the same era as Modern Talking and Sandra back in the 80s, and like many of their contemporaries, their music evolved from the more traditional europop to a more upbeat eurodance style. Its hard to pick a favourite BBB track, but check out "You're a woman, i'm a man" for a little taste of their magic.



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