Scott Trenda wrote:
Sure, usually I'd reply to the list, but at the point where you're
redefining the XmlResolver used in the .NET XSLProcessor instance used
for an admittedly fringe case, in order to get around a limitation that
the XSLT specification clearly says it defines no control over... isn't
that getting a little implementation-specific? My reply to Anthony was
more one of curiosity, a tangent that would help me at work in other
ways, but not really related to the topic at hand.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, eh? Although I suppose this is

not so harsh when compared to being reprimanded by the list owner for

*not* following list guidelines. ;)

  

Haha, no surely not. It wasn't meant as a reprimand anyway, I know you 
are a regular poster to the list. Anyway, I think even implementation 
specific solutions have a place here when they serve a generic need. 
Saying that someone can be solved by using the XmlResolver may hint 
somebody else using a Java processor to use the URIResolver, which is in 
general the same thing.



On a different level, being not sure I read every single letter on this 
thread yet, was it already proposed to use a proxy? Because with a proxy 
(which has hardly anything to do with XSLT of course), you can just do 
whatever you want.



I.e., suppose you create a proxy HTTP server that resides on the same 
server as your Coldfusion stuff, suppose that 
http://localhost:123456/proxy? runs a proxy script and that you call it 
as http://localhost:123456/proxy?url=http://test.com/doesnotexist. Now 
your proxy script must do two things:



 1. test if the url exists and if not, reply with an XML compatible error

 2. test if the result is a valid XML document and if not reply with an 
XML compatible error, if yes, reply with the XML result itself.



By doing something like that, you've taken the burden of your XSLT and 
you do not need to result to complex platform specific solutions. In 
fact, the solution will be very portable (and is close to what you 
would've done if you implement the XmlResolver solution, which however 
is in practice much harder with MSXML alone).



Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma