Lookup table embedded in XSLT stylesheet or in external XML file

Legacy Contributor

Dear community,

I am trying to build an advanced mapping to transform a custom XML file into a BOD. One of the requirements is to translate codes into corresponding descriptions. In XSLT this is possible by either embedding the lookup table as xml elements in the stylesheet itself, or by holding the table in an external XML file.

I've been reading in this community group but unfortunately I couldn't find an example of something similar. So, I'm wondering if anyone already succeeded in doing this?

In XSLT 1.0, when embedding the lookup table in a stylesheet, the lookup is normally accomplished using an <xsl:value-of select="document('')/*/... /> instruction.

However, I have the feeling that the "document('')" expression is not supported.

Inside this "document('')" expression, the name of an external XML file could be specified. But this raises the question where to store that XML file (I am using the CloudEdition of ION).

In XSLT 2.0, the embedded XML document would typically be stored as a variable. But also here, I did not succeed in producing a working example.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Kristof

Legacy Contributor

Hi



there is no way to make this completely dynamic in just the mapper, i.e. read in the lookup table at runtime from some external source – that is largely due to security considerations in a MT world



However you can create a function in the mapping that contains the values you want to use and use that during the mapping process, you might like to consider a Global User Defined Function (UDF) as well if you need to use this in more than one mapping. So this would give you the function you need but mean you maintain the list of from to values in your mapping.



Another more dynamic option would be to enrich your message before you process it in the mapper, that will depend on where it is coming from and what options you have available to you – this would be done with the ION connect capabilities.



A new feature coming to ION later this year is the a merge option – this would help with the above enrichment route – you receive your current message, call out to an API for example to get all the latest lookup values, merge them as a node in the document you had originally and pass the whole lot in to the mapper – allowing you to dynamically update the look up table with each run – if you need that type of capability



For sure I would start with the UDF, unless the data changes a lot and often



Hope this is of some help