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Restrict element creation in XSLT if value is empty

I wanted to create new element in target XML if and only if the element value of source XML is not empty. I can do this using below code. But, my problem is I have around 5k field to wrap with similar condition. Do we have any better way to handle this?
<xsl:if test="edi:po-num"> //wanted to avoid this for each element
<xsl:element name="element">
<xsl:attribute name="name">order_reference_number</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="edi:po-num"/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:if>
java code to transform:
Transformer trans = StylesheetCache.newTransformer(xslFilePath);
ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
trans.transform(source, new StreamResult(outputStream));

Your options in XSLT 1.0 are limited - XSLT 1.0 code tends to be verbose. But if it's really repetitive, then you could consider writing a meta-stylesheet - an XSLT stylesheet that generates your stylesheet from some higher-level description of what it needs to do.
Note also, your code will be a lot less verbose if you use literal result elements and attribute value templates rather than xsl:element and xsl:attribute.

Define XSL variable without type changing

I have a variable in my XSL file. Java returned java.util.List into this variable
<xsl:variable name="testVariable" select="java:getJavaList()"/>
After that this vairable is used in Java by method that takes java.util.List as parameter
<xsl:variable name="anotherVariable">
<xsl:value-of select="java:useTestVariable($testVariable)"/>
</xsl:variable>
Now requirements were changed to set testVariable value depending on particular condition. I tried this approach
<xsl:variable name="testVariable">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="contains($oneMoreVariable, '%')">
<xsl:value-of select="java:getValue('%')" />
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="java:getDefaulValue()" />
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
The problem is that if I define variable in this way, it contains not List, but tree fragment. And I get an exception
For extension function, could not find method
MyClassName.useTestVariable([ExpressionContext,] #RTREEFRAG)
Can somebody please advice what is the correct way to define variable value basing on some condition so, that variable's type would not be changed with tree fragment?

I don't think there's any way to do this in XSLT 1.0 as by definition any xsl:variable with content rather than a select must be a result tree fragment. But since you're able to make calls into Java you can put the conditional logic into a Java function, then call that from the variable's select.

Have you verified the resuts of java:getValue('%') and java:getDefaulValue() , if these results are coming out be what you expect and still it is a fragement refer this link https://blogs.oracle.com/rammenon/entry/result_tree_fragments_and_node

Trying to print out node values in XSLT using variable elements names

So here's a problem that's been bugging me for the last few days. It should be fairly easy, but XSLT is just such a pain to debug. We're using Xalan 1.0 on java 1.6
Input XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rfb2>
<rfb2_item>
<VALDATE>2011-10-23</VALDATE>
<FUND_ID>300</FUND_ID>
<SEC_ID>34567</SEC_ID>
</rfb2_item>
<rfb2_item>
<VALDATE>2011-1-09</VALDATE>
<FUND_ID>700</FUND_ID>
<SEC_ID>13587</SEC_ID>
</rfb2_item>
<rfb2_item>
<VALDATE>2011-3-09</VALDATE>
<FUND_ID>200</FUND_ID>
<SEC_ID>999334</SEC_ID>
</rfb2_item>
<rfb2>
We need to transform the XML into a comma-separated list of values for each rfb2_item, so the style sheet always iterates the rfb2_item nodes. We are using a parameter in the style sheet to control which elements of rfb2_item (valdate,fund_id,sec_id) that will be output, and in what order, for example
<xsl:param name="$outputElements" select="'VALDATE,FUND_ID'"/>
..outputs...
2011-10-23,300
2011-1-09,700
2011-3-09,200
<xsl:param name="$outputElements" select="'SEC_ID'"/>
..outputs...
34567
13587
999334
Special case where if $outputElements is '*', just output the elements in the order they appear in the input xml
<xsl:param name="$outputElements" select="'*'"/>
..outputs...
2011-10-23,300,34567
2011-1-09,700,13587
2011-3-09,200,999334
So, my question is how do we write a template to create the desired output based on the $outputElements parameter? A working example would be great...

Yup, FailedDev is right. Someone would write it for you:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text" />
<xsl:param name="outputElements" select=" 'FUND_ID,SEC_ID,VALDATE' " />
<xsl:template match="rfb2_item">
<xsl:for-each select="*[contains($outputElements, local-name()) or $outputElements = '*']">
<xsl:sort select="string-length(substring-before($outputElements, local-name(.)))" />
<xsl:value-of select="text()" />
<xsl:if test="position() != last()">
<xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Bit of explanation. The xsl:for-each is gonna select each element in the current rfb2_item for which the local name is contained in the outputElements parameter, or for which the outputElements parameter is * (which would always yield true if that's the case). It's then gonna sort those based on the length of the substring that goes before that local name in outputElements. Since this value becomes higher when the name occurs later in that parameter, this results in ordering based on your parameter.
Example: element VALDATE would yield FUND_ID,SEC_ID for the substring-before function, which in turn would yield 14 as string length. This is higher than the 8 that you'd get for SEC_ID, meaning the VALDATE value is ordered after SEC_ID.
After the xsl:sort, we're simply using xsl:value-of to output the element value. You might want to trim extraneous whitespace there. Finally, we're testing if the position is not equal to that of the last node in the current context (which is that of xsl:for-each after sorting) and if so, output a comma. This avoids outputting a comma after the last value.
The line break I've inserted using xsl:text assumes the Windows/DOS convention. Remove the 
 if the file should only use new line characters for line breaks, instead of carriage return + new line.
Note that this does not escape commas in your CSV output! I'll leave that up to you. It could be interesting to look into using extension functions for delegating this task to Java if it proves too difficult in XSLT/XPath.

Sometimes in this kind of situation it's worth looking at the possibility of generating or modifying XSLT code using XSLT. You can take the parameterization a lot further that way - for example controlling which fields are output, how they are sorted, whether they are grouped, selection criteria for which rows are selected, etc etc.

How to match and process unknown XML elements in XSLT 1.0?

I have a simply XSLT 1.0 stylesheet, that turns XML documents in XHTML. I really want to be able to "include" the content of an XML file in another when needed. AFAIK it is simply not possible in XSLT 1.0, so I decided to move my processing to a simple Java app that would pre-process the XML, executing the "includes" recursively, and passing it to the default JDK XSLT processor. I have a XML schema that my documents must conform to.
The most used element is called "text", and can have an "id" and/or a "class" attribute, which gets used for XHTML styling with CSS. This element gets turned into "p", "div", or "span" depending on the context.
What I would like to add, is the ability to define "unknown" elements in my input files, and have them transformed in a "text" element for further processing. If the "unknown" element's name start with a capital letter, then it becomes a "text", with "id" set to original name. Otherwise a "text" with "class" set to original name. Everything else in the unknown element should be kept as-is, and then it should be processed by XSLT as if it was originally in the input file. In other words, I would like to transform all unknown elements to for a valid XML document, and then process it with my stylesheet.
Can this be done in XSLT, possibly in a pre-processing "stylesheet", or should I do that as pre-processing in Java? Performance here is not important. I would prefer a XSLT solution, but not if it's much more complicated then doing it in Java.

Well, since no one answered, I just tried it. While is is easier to do it in Java, it has one major drawback: since the code need to know the valid elements so that it recognize the unknown ones, you end up having to hardcode that in your code and have to recompile it if the XSLT template changes.
So, I tried in XSLT and it also works. Let's say you have:
<xsl:template match="text">
*processing*
<xsl:call-template name="id_and_class"/>
*processing*
</xsl:template>
where the template named id_and_class copies your id and classes attribute in the generated element, and you want unknown elements to be mapped to "text" elements, then you can do this:
<xsl:template match="text">
<xsl:call-template name="text_processing"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="text_processing">
*processing*
<xsl:call-template name="text_id_and_class"/>
*processing*
</xsl:template>
...
<xsl:template name="text_id_and_class">
<xsl:choose>
<!-- If name() is not "text", then we have an unknown element. -->
<xsl:when test="name()!='text'">
<!-- Processing of ID and class omitted ... -->
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:call-template name="id_and_class"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
...
<!-- MUST BE LAST : Process unknown elements like a "text" element. -->
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:call-template name="text_processing"/>
</xsl:template>
If yon process the content of one specific element with a named template, then you can check in that template if the name matches, and use that for your special processing. Then you just have to put a <xsl:template match="*"> at the end of your stylesheet and call the named template from there.

Formatted HTML as output from method invocation from MX4J HTTP page

I have a huge set of data and want to display the data with some formatting.
This is what the method basically looks like:
#ManagedOperation(description = "return html")
#ManagedOperationParameters({#ManagedOperationParameter(name = "someVal", description = "text")})
public String returnAsHtml(String someVal)
{
return "some formatted xml";
}
Looks like XSLTProcessor can be configured to use a XSLT template. However I could not find any examples on the internet using XSLT for html transformation in the context of MX4J. Could any one provide a sample XSLT template?

In case anyone comes back to this question, two things come to mind:
1) MX4J has several default implementations of HttpCommandProcessorAdaptor. These operations are mapped from the path. For JMX operations (aka ManagedOperation in Spring parlance), MX4J uses URLs like /invoke?operation=returnAsHtml
This will be passed to the InvokeOperationCommandProcessor to create an XML document with the result being just the toString() of whatever you returned, in an attribute called 'return'. It also passes back the return type in an attribute called 'returnclass'. You can see all this if you just add &template=identity to the invoke URL.
I mention all this because one option is to implement your own 'invoke.xsl'. The one in MX4J just calls the renderobject template:
Lo and behold, you find this in mbean_attributes.xsl, with a comment showing you exactly what you need to do:
<xsl:template name="renderobject">
<xsl:param name="objectclass"/>
<xsl:param name="objectvalue"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$objectclass='javax.management.ObjectName'">
<xsl:variable name="name_encoded">
<xsl:call-template name="uri-encode">
<xsl:with-param name="uri">
<xsl:value-of select="$objectvalue"/>
</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>
<a href="/mbean?objectname={$name_encoded}">
<xsl:value-of select="$objectvalue"/>
</a>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<!-- Use the following line when the result of an invocation
returns e.g. HTML or XML data
<xsl:value-of select="$objectvalue" disable-output-escaping="true" />
-->
<xsl:value-of select="$objectvalue"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
Setting 'disable-output-escaping' to true will do the trick
2) Another option is to write your own HttpCommandProcessorAdaptor, and set it on the HttpAdapter. This could either replace the 'invoke' processor, or you could have an entirely new one.
Hope that helps

One way I figured out is to use java script in the XSL template to extract and parse the string. Make sure you test for the browser (IE vs Non IE) and use proper parser.