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When I attempt to import an XML file into InDesign using an XSLT stylesheet, I get "DOM transformation error: Invalid namespace" and the import fails. I've tried the solution mentioned in this post, but it doesn't work for me: Namespace error when importing XML-file into InDesign. I have been unable to find any other posts that deal with this issue directly.

At its simplest, my code looks like this. I've stripped everything else away, and this still fails for me.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
    xmlns:aid="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/4.0/"
    xmlns:aid5="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/5.0/">

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="book">
   <book xmlns:aid="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/4.0/" xmlns:aid5="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/5.0/">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
   </book>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Incidentally, when I transform the XML with this code outside of InDesign in a test environment, I can import the resulting XML with no issues, which leads me to believe that it's an InDesign issue rather than an XSLT issue. I've looked through my XSLT for another namespace that might not have gotten declared, but I can't find anything.

Any insight is greatly appreciated!

T. Carano
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  • Can you post some sample XML what gives you an error? – Nicolai Kant Dec 10 '20 at 23:31
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    Also, I do not think that the book element is the part of both namespaces. Book is not a element of the document – Nicolai Kant Dec 10 '20 at 23:35
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    when testing XSLT outside of InDesign, use xalan. This will provide similar results. – user1754036 Dec 14 '20 at 16:30
  • @NicolaiKant, thank you for your response. We renamed the Root element in the InDesign template to book, so it does match. In testing, I also reverted everything back to Root (including my source XML), and I still get the error. I have since learned that this is apparently a known issue, based on a comment buried in the SDK somewhere. I've done a lot more testing since posting this, and no matter how much we simplify the document or the XSL stylesheet, it fails on the namespace declaration every time. – T. Carano Dec 29 '20 at 00:03
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    Thanks for the tip, @user1754036. I will definitely keep that in mind as I do further testing. – T. Carano Dec 29 '20 at 00:04

1 Answers1

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For anyone that might encounter this issue in the future, I was able to resolve this issue following the example in the Plugin SDK in the XSL files located in: source/sdksamples/xdocbookworkflow/examplefiles

Basically, here are the rules (and steps will follow):

  1. The source XML should not contain any namespaces. Those are introduced during import using the import stylesheet.
  2. The root element must contain the namespace definitions.
  3. Namespaces cannot be processed directly and must be added using variables.

The XSL processing engine is pretty picky about namespaces, even Adobe's aid and aid5 namespaces. If they are in your source XML, you can import them without any issues if you don't associate an import XSL stylesheet. As soon as you add the stylesheet, the namespaces will break the import with an 'Invalid Namespace' error.

Adding the namespace to the root element is simply a workaround by creating a dummy attribute:

<xsl:template match="root-element">
<copy>
  <xsl:variable name="ns">aid</xsl:variable>
  <xsl:attribute
    name="{concat($ns, ':role')}"
    namespace="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/4.0/">force-namespace</xsl:attribute>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</copy>
</xsl:template>

The aid:role attribute is not an actually an attribute, but must be used to force the namespace to behave correctly. Then for each attribute that uses a namespace, you construct the attribute in the same way:

<xsl:template match="root/title">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:variable name="ns">aid</xsl:variable>
    <xsl:attribute
      name="{concat($ns, ':pstyle')}"
      namespace="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/4.0/">doc-title</xsl:attribute>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

In my case, my source XML contained widths for table cells, so I had to convert the attribute names to the correct aid namespace so that the InDesign tables could identify and apply the correct value. Here was how I handled that:

<xsl:template match="@cellwidth">
  <xsl:variable name="idns">aid</xsl:variable>
  <xsl:attribute name="{concat($idns,':ccolwidth')}"
    namespace="http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/4.0/">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>

For a full example of how this works, refer to the XSL stylesheets in the SDK location specified above.

T. Carano
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