You write a URIResolver (under Java JAXP) or XmlResolver (under .NET) that
intercepts the URI and returns an object that the XSLT processor can handle,
for example (under JAXP) a StreamSource wrapping a StringReader that holds
the lexical XML.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/ 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John [mailto:john-xsl-list@xxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 27 June 2005 21:09
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Retrieve External String XML Data as Object
> 
> I have a data source that is only available through APIs, not through 
> URLs or files.  I can represent this external data as XML, 
> but how can I 
> make this data available to my XSL?  The document() function seems to 
> require the first parameter be an URL, and the node-set 
> extensions don't 
> seem to handle strings (at least not the Microsoft node-set 
> extensions).
> 
> Where custom:GetData() basically returns some XML:
> 
> return( "<root><node>some text</node></root>" );
> 
> I have tried:
> 
> <xsl:variable name="extdata" select="msxsl:node-set( 
> custom:GetData())" />
> <xsl:value-of select="$extdata/root/node/text()" />
> 
> which gives 'cannot convert the operand to result tree fragment'.
> 
> I have also tried:
> 
> <xsl:variable name="extdata" select="document( custom:GetData())" />
> <xsl:value-of select="$extdata/root/node/text()" />
> 
> Which gives no output.  Do I have to make the data URL-accessible, or 
> how can I get this XML into my XSLT as an object instead of a string? 
> Should I convert the string to some other type of object before 
> returning it to the XSL?  Of course I would prefer to avoid 
> extensions 
> if possible.  Hopefully there is something like document() 
> that works on 
> strings instead of URLs?