saxon:hexBinary serialization method

The serialization method saxon:hexBinary is intended to be useful when creating binary output files, for example images. All serialization properties other than method are ignored.

As with the text output method, all nodes in the result tree other than text nodes are ignored. Each text node must hold a string that is in the lexical space of the xs:hexBinary data type. The sequence of octets corresponding to this hexBinary value is written to the binary output file.

When invoking this method via an API, use the property value {http://saxon.sf.net/}hexBinary.

When using this serialization method, the omit-xml-declaration parameter is automatically set to yes.

In the following example, the image displays as a small red dot. Note that whitespace cannot appear in the middle of an xs:hexBinary value, but the string can be split into multiple text nodes so long as each contains an even number of characters.

<xsl:template name="main"> <html> <head> <title>An image</title> </head> <body> <h1>An image</h1> <p><img src="image004.gif"/></p> </body> </html> <xsl:result-document method="saxon:hexBinary" href="image004.gif" media-type="image/gif"> <xsl:text>89504E470D0A1A0A0000000D49484452</xsl:text> <xsl:text>0000000A0000000A08060000008D32CF</xsl:text> <xsl:text>BD0000000467414D410000B18F0BFC61</xsl:text> <xsl:text>05000000097048597300000B1300000B</xsl:text> <xsl:text>1301009A9C180000000774494D4507D6</xsl:text> <xsl:text>06011739281D1757E20000001D744558</xsl:text> <xsl:text>74436F6D6D656E740043726561746564</xsl:text> <xsl:text>2077697468205468652047494D50EF64</xsl:text> <xsl:text>256E0000005D4944415418D3BDCCBD0D</xsl:text> <xsl:text>825000C4F11F74B4ECE0164CE0320EE0</xsl:text> <xsl:text>2ECEC1083626843D2C4D5EC5D958BC10</xsl:text> <xsl:text>5E67B8EA721F7FFEAD6E1F84CBCF0E1D</xsl:text> <xsl:text>EBE12B5CC31C5EE1D6C4877728E1139E</xsl:text> <xsl:text>75D757A309A5CAB630B688F7B0844773</xsl:text> <xsl:text>74BEBE0C921A177B4AD98A0000000049</xsl:text> <xsl:text>454E44AE426082</xsl:text> </xsl:result-document> </xsl:template>

It is of course possible to construct the hexBinary value programmatically. The EXPath binary library is however geared towards creating base64Binary values, so that will usually be a better option.

When writing output that is not entirely binary, but contains mixed binary and text, it may be more convenient to use the text output method with the saxon:recognize-binary serialization parameter.

See also the saxon:base64Binary serialization method.