Recently a client asked us if we could link the metadata for a SharePoint search result (which is the green text at the bottom of every search result) to bring the user to the document library / folder where the document is held.

At first this looked like quite a trivial task, edit the xslt to remove everything after the last forward slash:

Turning:

http://topLevelSite/Subsite/DocumentLibrary/folderone/foldertwo/document.doc

Into:

http://topLevelSite/Subsite/DocumentLibrary/folderone/foldertwo

This unfortunately proved not to be possible. This is because SharePoint uses xsl 1.0 which doesn’t have as much functionality as xsl 2.0.

The eventual solution involved:

1) Two templates:
•    countTokens: a template used to count the number of a given symbol within a string, in this case /.

  <!– Function to count the occurences of a string within another string –>
  <xsl:template name="countTokens">
    <xsl:param name="string" />
    <xsl:param name="token" />
    <xsl:param name="result" />

    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="contains($string, $token)">
        <xsl:call-template name="countTokens">
          <xsl:with-param name="string"
select="substring-after($string, $token)" />
          <xsl:with-param name="token" select="$token"/>
          <xsl:with-param name="result" select="$result + 1"/>
        </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:value-of select="$result" />
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>

  </xsl:template>

•    Reverse: A template to reverse a string

  <!– Function to reverse a given string –>
  <xsl:template name="reverse">
    <xsl:param name="input"/>
    <xsl:variable name="len" select="string-length($input)"/>
    <xsl:choose>
      <!– Strings of length less than 2 are trivial to reverse –>
      <xsl:when test="$len &lt; 2">
        <xsl:value-of select="$input"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <!– Strings of length 2 are also trivial to reverse –>
      <xsl:when test="$len = 2">
        <xsl:value-of select="substring($input,2,1)"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="substring($input,1,1)"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <!– Swap the recursive application of this template to
                    the first half and second half of input –>
        <xsl:variable name="mid" select="floor($len div 2)"/>
        <xsl:call-template name="reverse">
          <xsl:with-param name="input"
              select="substring($input,$mid+1,$mid+1)"/>
        </xsl:call-template>
        <xsl:call-template name="reverse">
          <xsl:with-param name="input"
              select="substring($input,1,$mid)"/>
        </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>

2) Changes to span class="srch-URL", which resides within p class="srch-Metadata"

<span class="srch-URL">

        <!– Get number of slashes in URL –>
        <xsl:variable name="numberofslashes">
          <xsl:call-template name="countTokens">
            <xsl:with-param name="string" select="$url" />
            <xsl:with-param name="token" select="string(‘/’)" />
            <xsl:with-param name="result" select="0" />
          </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:variable>

        <!– Reverse the URL –>
        <xsl:variable name="reversedurl">
          <xsl:call-template name="reverse">
            <xsl:with-param name="input" select="$url" />
          </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:variable>

        <xsl:variable name="newurl">
          <xsl:choose>

            <!– If it contains 3+ slashes, we can remove what’s left after the last one –>
            <xsl:when test="number($numberofslashes) &gt; 3">
              <xsl:call-template name="reverse">
                <xsl:with-param name="input" select="substring-after($reversedurl, ‘/’)" />
              </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:when>

            <!– Otherwise just reverse it back –>
            <xsl:otherwise>
              <xsl:call-template name="reverse">
                <xsl:with-param name="input" select="$reversedurl" />
              </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:otherwise>

          </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:variable>

        <a href="{$newurl}" id="{concat(‘CSR_U_’,$id)}" title="{$url}" dir="ltr">
          <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="hithighlightedproperties/HHUrl[. != '']">
              <xsl:call-template name="HitHighlighting">
                <xsl:with-param name="hh" select="hithighlightedproperties/HHUrl" />
              </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
              <xsl:value-of select="url"/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
          </xsl:choose>
        </a>
      </span>

This code works by reversing the string original string to give the string backwards:

http://topLevelSite/Subsite/DocumentLibrary/folderone/foldertwo/document.doc

Would become:

cod.tnemucod/owtredlof/enoredlof/yrarbiLtnemucoD/etisbuS/etiSleveLpot//:ptth

If there are more than 3 forward slashes in the string, we take the substring after the first slash of the reversed string:

owtredlof/enoredlof/yrarbiLtnemucoD/etisbuS/etiSleveLpot//:ptth

and then reverse it back:

http://topLevelSite/Subsite/DocumentLibrary/folderone/foldertwo

if there are less than 3 slashes:

etiSleveLpot//:ptth

Just reverse the string back:

http://topLevelSite.