Inserting Lookup columns into Data View Web part displays as XML

Question

I am trying to configure a Data View web part in SP Designer 2010. I am connecting it to a list called Data Returns.

Data Returns includes a mixture of Fields, some text, some choice, some lookup.

Whenever I insert a lookup field into the DVWP the data displays as raw html like this:

<a onclick="OpenPopUpPage('http://****/departments/ITG/IRP/DPAR/_layouts/listform.aspx?PageType=4&ListId={A655B962-2383-44F4-8FFA-BB2BD72D8***}&ID=10&RootFolder=*', RefreshPage); return false;" href="http://****/departments/ITG/IRP/DPAR/_layouts/listform.aspx?PageType=4&ListId={A655B962-2383-44F4-8FFA-BB2BD72D****}&ID=10&RootFolder=*">P309 - TOM1.</a>

All that should be displayed is "P309 - TOM1". Is this a known issue with Lookups and DVWP? Is their an easy way of coverting this to the actual data value?

Answer 1

You'll need to do some substring functions to get the data. In this case, you'd do something like this, you might need to encode the special characters like " < >:

<xsl:value-of select="substring-after(substring-before(@YourColumn, '</a>'), 'RootFolder=*">')" />

This is also the case with fields like Person/group fields if you want plain text values and not hyperlinks. You can check out some of the XSLT telpates thaat are posted on spxslt.codeplex.com. This might make a good addition to the templates.