How to modify text strings

[Cicorione]

Hi Patrick,

Could you publish on the documentation some example about operating on text strings to perform special operation, I do a classic example.

The input for the telephone number is:
<tel>1234567890</tel>

But when is generated looks like:
(123) 456-7890

I couldn't figure out how to break the string, for me the layout would need three input, such as:
('input1') 'input2'-'input3'

Thanks... 🙏

[pgundlach]

Well, this is an XPath question, not really a topic for small section in the manual (too big to cover). There are good online resources for XPath.

For this example: The data:

<data>
    <tel>1234567890</tel>
</data>

<Layout xmlns="urn:speedata.de:2009/publisher/en"
    xmlns:sd="urn:speedata:2009/publisher/functions/en">

    <Record element="data">
        <PlaceObject>
            <Textblock>
                <Paragraph>
                    <Value select="concat('(', substring(tel, 1, 3), ') ', substring(tel, 4, 3), '-', substring(tel, 7, 4))"></Value>
                </Paragraph>
            </Textblock>
        </PlaceObject>
    </Record>
</Layout>

renders as

(123) 456‐7890

See for example https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/XPath/Reference/Functions/substring

If you have another question, don't hesitate to ask.

[pgundlach]

I have to admit that I was too lazy for that and asked deepseek for an answer... ("how can i use XPath to transform a telephone number from a string like '1234567890' to a formatted number like "(123) 456-7890"?")

[Cicorione]

Thank you for leading me toward the right path... 🙏