Operation Manual
Missing character entities for XSLT
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Specify a missing character entity
Specify a missing character entity
In XSLT, some characters are not allowed in certain contexts. For example, you cannot use the less than sign (<) and the ampersand (&) in the
text between tags or in an attribute value. The XSLT transformation engine will give you an error if those characters are used incorrectly. To solve
the problem, you can specify character entities to replace the special characters.
A character entity is a string of characters that represents other characters. Character entities are either named or numbered. A named entity
begins with an ampersand (&) followed by the name or characters, and ends with a semicolon (;). For example, < represents the left angle
bracket character (<). Numbered entities also start and end the same way, except that a hash sign (#) and a number specify the character.
XSLT has the following five predefined entities:
Character Entity Code
< (less-than) <
& (ampersand) &
> (greater-than) >
" (quote) "
‘ (apostrophe) '
If you use other character entities in an XSL file, you need to define them in the DTD section of the XSL file. Dreamweaver provides several
default entity definitions that you can see at the top of an XSL file created in Dreamweaver. These default entities cover a broad selection of the
most commonly used characters.
When you preview your XSL file in a browser, Dreamweaver checks the XSL file for undefined entities and notifies you if an undefined entity is
found.
If you preview an XML file attached to an XSLT file or if you preview a server-side page with an XSLT transformation, the server or browser
(instead of Dreamweaver) notifies you of an undefined entity. The following is an example of a message you may get in Internet Explorer when you
request an XML file transformed by an XSL file with a missing entity definition:
Reference to undefined entity 'auml'. Error processing resource 'http://localhost/testthis/list.xsl'. Line
28, Position 20
<p class=''test''>ä</p>
-------------------^
To correct the error in your page, you must add the entity definition to your page manually.
Specify a missing entity definition
1. Look up the missing character in the character entity reference page on the W3C website at www.w3.org/TR/REC-
html40/sgml/entities.html.
This web page contains the 252 allowed entities in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0.
For example, if the character entity Egrave is missing, search for “Egrave” on the W3C web page. You will find the following
entry:
<!ENTITY Egrave CDATA "È" -- latin capital letter E with grave, U+00C8 ISOlat1 -->
2. Make a note of the entity name and entity code in the entry.
In the example, Egrave is the entity name, and È is the entity code.
3. With this information, switch to Code view and enter the following entity tag at the top of your XSL file (following the Doctype
declaration and with the other entity tags):
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