Error handling with libxml error handling functions

libxml offers a number of functions for handling errors, which can be employed to capture and deal with errors in XSLT processing.

Example #1 fruits.xml

A valid XML file.

<fruits>
 <fruit>Apple</fruit>
 <fruit>Banana</fruit>
 <fruit>Cherry</fruit>
</fruits>

Example #2 fruits.xsl

Contains an invalid select expression.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output method="html" encoding="utf-8" indent="no"/>
 <xsl:template match="fruits">
  <ul>
   <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </ul>
 </xsl:template>
 <xsl:template match="fruit">
  <li><xsl:value-of select="THIS IS A DELIBERATE ERROR!"/></li>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Example #3 Collating and printing errors

The example below captures and displays libxml errors raised when calling XSLTProcessor::importStyleSheet() with a stylesheet containing an error.


<?php

$xmldoc = new DOMDocument();
$xsldoc = new DOMDocument();
$xsl = new XSLTProcessor();

$xmldoc->loadXML('fruits.xml');
$xsldoc->loadXML('fruits.xsl');

libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$result = $xsl->importStyleSheet($xsldoc);
if (!$result) {
    foreach (libxml_get_errors() as $error) {
        echo "Libxml error: {$error->message}\n";
    }
}
libxml_use_internal_errors(false);

if ($result) {
    echo $xsl->transformToXML($xmldoc);
}

?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Libxml error: Invalid expression

Libxml error: compilation error: file fruits.xsl line 9 element value-of
Libxml error: xsl:value-of : could not compile select expression 'THIS IS A DELIBERATE ERROR!'