The problem is that the ampersand character is a 'special' character in XSLT, so it must be escaped in your xslt, as &

In your code, I would do something like this:

<xsl:variable name="WTurl">
                <xsl:text>http://</xsl:text>
                <xsl:value-of select="$WTdomain" />
                <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
                <xsl:value-of select="$WTid" />
                <xsl:text>/dcs.gif?</xsl:text>
                <!-- Query string parameters -->
                <xsl:text>WT.seg_2=mobile</xsl:text>
                <!-- The "&" needs to go here -->
                <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;</xsl:text>
                <xsl:text>RAND=53335</xsl:text>
        </xsl:variable>    

or...

<xsl:variable name="WTurl">
                <xsl:text>http://</xsl:text>
                <xsl:value-of select="$WTdomain" />
                <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
                <xsl:value-of select="$WTid" />
                <xsl:text>/dcs.gif?</xsl:text>
                <!-- Query string parameters -->
                <xsl:text>WT.seg_2=mobile</xsl:text>
                <!-- The "&" needs to go here -->
                <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;RAND=53335</xsl:text>
        </xsl:variable>    

cheers,
doug.

Thinking about this for another few seconds I'm not sure you'll even need the disable-output-escaping="yes" portion of the <xsl:text> tag. Try it without first and you should be okay.

Do bear in mind that though you don't usually see &amp; on the querystring of a browser it is perfectly valid and supported by all browsers, so don't let it bother you if the url you end up with has &amp; in it rather than the shortened & only... both work just fine in the real world. :)

cheers,
doug.

Hi Neil,

Remember CDATA is your friend! (modifications in bold below)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [
    <!ENTITY nbsp "&#x00A0;">
    <!ENTITY amp "&#x0026;">
]>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
        xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
        xmlns:msxml="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
        xmlns:umbraco.library="urn:umbraco.library"
        exclude-result-prefixes="msxml umbraco.library">

    <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" encoding="utf-8" />

    <xsl:param name="currentPage"/>

    <xsl:variable name="WTdomain" select="umbraco.library:GetDictionaryItem('WebTrendsDomain')" />
    <xsl:variable name="WTid" select="umbraco.library:GetDictionaryItem('WebTrendsID')"/>

    <xsl:variable name="WTurl">
        <xsl:value-of select="concat('http://', $WTdomain, '/', $WTid, '/dcs.gif?')" />
        <!-- Query string parameters -->
        <xsl:text><![CDATA[WT.seg_2=mobile&RAND=53335]]></xsl:text>
    </xsl:variable>

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:comment>
            <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">Render WT tag </xsl:text>
            <xsl:value-of select="$WTdomain" />
            <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> - </xsl:text>
            <xsl:value-of select="$WTid" />
        </xsl:comment>
        <xsl:text>&#10;&#09;</xsl:text>

        <!-- image tag -->
        <img alt="." width="1" height="1">
            <xsl:attribute name="src">
                <xsl:value-of select="$WTurl" disable-output-escaping="yes" />
            </xsl:attribute>
        </img>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Cheers, Lee.

Thanks,

As Doug pointed out, this results in the following URL:

dcs.gif?WT.seg_2=mobile&RAND=11111

I always though it had to be "&" not "&amp;". Its crucial that the query string parameters are retrievable - otherwise the WebTrends tracking will not work.

Neil

In fact, using "&" only breaks xhtml validation.  Browsers can work with both though so it's not something to worry about.  From the linked page...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To avoid problems with both validators and browsers, always use &amp; in place of & when writing URLs in HTML:

<a href="foo.cgi?chapter=1&amp;section=2&amp;copy=3&amp;lang=en">...</a>

Note that replacing & with &amp; is only done when writing the URL in HTML, where "&" is a special character (along with "<" and ">"). When writing the same URL in a plain text email message or in the location bar of your browser, you would use "&" and not "&amp;". With HTML, the browser translates "&amp;" to "&" so the Web server would only see "&" and not "&amp;" in the query string of the request

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dan

Thanks Dan,

But when I click the created link:

/dcs.gif?;WT.seg_2=mobile&1=1

the browser (Chrome) windows open with the "&amp;" intact in the address bar. That's to be expected? It wouldn't "translate" the "&amp;" back to "&"?

Neil

Did my XSLT not work for you Neil?  Take another look... check you are using the CDATA data - and disable-output-escaping on the value-of.

Cheers, Lee.

It did Lee - once I read the page Dan linked to and realised that "&amp;" is the valid approach.

It was just throwing me a little when I clicked the link and saw the "&amp;" in the address bar - I just assumed the browser would change this.

Thanks

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