Very simple XSLT string replacing question

Question

Hi,
This is a really simple question for you guys, but it took me long, and i still couldn't solve it.
I just want to remove all spaces from a node inside an XML file.
XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root insertedtime="2008-05-01T14:03:00.000+10:00" pkid="23421">
   <books>
      <book type='fiction'>
         <author>John Smith</author>
         <title>Book title</title>
         <year>2 0  0 8</year>
      </book>
   </books>
</root>in the 'year' node, the value should not contain any spaces, that's the reason why i need to remove spaces using XSLT. Apart from removing space, i also need to make sure that the 'year' node has a non-empty value. Here's the XSLT:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
    <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
    <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="//books/book[@type='fiction']">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
            <xsl:attribute name="id">101</xsl:attribute>
            <xsl:call-template name="emptyCheck">
                <xsl:with-param name="val" select="year"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="type" select="@type"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="copy" select="'true'"/>
            </xsl:call-template>
            <xsl:value-of select="translate(year, ' ', '')"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <!-- emptyCheck checks if a string is an empty string -->
    <xsl:template name="emptyCheck">
        <xsl:param name="val"/>
        <xsl:param name="type"/>
        <xsl:param name="copy"/>
        <xsl:if test="boolean($copy)">
            <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
        </xsl:if>
        <xsl:if test="string-length($val) = 0 ">
            <exception description="Type {$type} value cannot be empty"/>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>The 'emptyCheck' function works fine, but the space replacing is not working, this is the result after the transform:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root insertedtime="2008-05-01T14:03:00.000+10:00" pkid="23421">
   <books>
      <book type="fiction" id="101">
         <author>John Smith</author>
         <title>Book title</title>
         <year>2 0 0 8</year>2008</book>
   </books>
</root>The spaced year value is still there, the no-space year is added outside the 'year' tags'
anyone can help me, your help is extremely appreciated!
Thanks!

Answer 1

You should add a template for 'year' :<xsl:template match="year">
<year><xsl:value-of select="translate(.,' ','')"/></year>
</xsl:template>and remove the translate call in the 'book' template.
It would be better to add a 'priority' attribute at each template so it would be explicit which template to use because match="@*|node()" could be interpreted by another transform engine as the unique template to be used !