Error when applying stylesheet to xml with & character

I am a newbie to XML/XSL and I was hoping someone could help.

I am retrieving records from the database that could contain the & character and creating an xml document from the records returned. When trying to apply a styelsheet to this xml I get an error when finding an & in the string. For example here is the xml:

<data>
<row>
<col>3902222</col>
<col>FAIRVIEW & COLLINS</col>
</row>
</data>

And here is the select in the xsl:
<xsl:for-each select="col">
<TD valign="top">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="position() = 1">
<A href="displayData.jsp">
<b>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</b>
<BR/>
</A>
</xsl:when>
<xsltherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="." />
<BR/>
</xsltherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</FONT>
</TD>
</xsl:for-each>
</TR>
</xsl:for-each>


Here is the error:
javax.servlet.jsp.JspException: Error applying stylesheet output.xsl Expected name instead of .

I have tried disable-output-escaping = "yes" and that does not work.

Can someone help?
Thanks.

Hello. You need to use the entity & in place of & and < in place of "<" when transforming XML...how are you retrieving your records?

Is it possible to 'cleanse' the data string before enclosing it in the <col> tag? (i.e. replace & refrences with & and < with <)

Thanks for your reply.
I am retrieving the records via jdbc/sql. I have tried to replace the & dynamically while retrieving the records with something else, and the change is reflected in the xml, but I still get the error when applying the stylesheet.

-AW

can you include the whole XSL file? and a sample XML file (is data the root node?)

Something you could try would be to escape the <col> text by wrapping a CDATA around it, i.e.:

<col><![CDATA[ FAIRVIEW & COLLINS ]]></col>

this will also allow you to specify HTML which will be spit out to the browser (rather than being interpretted as XML).

True, but if he can wrap the data in CDATA tags, he could just do & instead of &, correct?

Do you have any control over the base xml document? If you do that is, of course, the best/easiest solution. The xml translator replaces entity values in the xml prior to applying the stylesheet (if any), so I don't believe an xsl solution is possible. (given: I've been wrong before and would welcome a learning experience).