Data View Web Part: edit XSL to force a carriage return in a Multi-item field

Question

I am using multi item lookup fields in a list (eg: "Data Subjects"). I then have a web part page with a Data View Web part connected to this list.

The data within Lookup fields span the column width but I wish each new item of data to start on a new line for clarity.

Example:

Apples; Pears; Peaches;

I am trying to insert the following XSL into code view:

<xsl:param name="text" select="@Data_x0020_Subjects"/>  
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="contains($text, ';')">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after($text, ';')"/>
<xsl:value-of select="concat(.,'&#xA;')"/>
</xsl:when>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl param>

However, I get various errors relating to the location of the XSL: or "keyword xsl:stylesheet may not contain xsl:choose"

Newbie to XSL so any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

At first glance, you are closing off your xsl param in the first line. Then you have an unnecessary and mistyped closing xsl param tag which can be removed. You'll also want to include an xsl:otherwise so that if no multiple selection is made, the text is returned.

This might be helpful, look at question 1. You'll need to do a recursive template to do it, it isn't as easy as doing a string replace, you have to break the components up and interject some html into the output.

Using the above link, and this one, I was able to get it working as a sample. This is the template to add with all the other templates defined in the XSL.

<xsl:template name="StringSplit">
<xsl:param name="val" />
<xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="contains($val, ';')">
   <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($val, ';')" />
    <br />
     <xsl:call-template name="StringSplit">
     <xsl:with-param name="val" select="substring-after($val, ';')" />
     </xsl:call-template>
  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:value-of select="$val" />
   </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

Then in your rowview, you'd call this template as such:

<td class="ms-vb">
    <xsl:call-template name="StringSplit">
      <xsl:with-param name="val" select="@YourColumn" />
    </xsl:call-template>
</td>