XML XSLT Notes - AThinkTank

We provide internet solutions that will save you both time and money.

Home

Services

AThinkStats

Resources

Partners

Sitemap

Books we recommend, the Tidwell is excelent.:

If you need to pass something funky to value of an attribute, just set it as a variable first.

	<xsl:variable name="page" select="page"/>
	<a href="{$page}"><xsl:value-of select="name" /></a>

Compare ALL of the decendant's, or self, node element's id attribute to see if it is equal to the variable something.

<xsl:when test="descendant-or-self::node/@id = $something" >

Pull a variable out of a file and set it.

<xsl:variable name="myVariable">
    <xsl:for-each select="document('relative/path/filename.xml')">
        <xsl:value-of select="/absolute/path/variable"/>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:variable>

Load an xml structure to be used throughout the document. Once loaded, you can reference at will.

<xsl:variable name="nav" select="document($sitewide)/tree"/>

Stuff that is just needed at the top of the document.

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0" />
<xsl:output indent="yes" method="html" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" />

Add a meta element for a stylesheet

<xsl:element name="link">
    <xsl:attribute name="rel">
        <xsl:text>stylesheet</xsl:text>
    </xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="href">
        <xsl:text>stylesheet.css</xsl:text>
    </xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="type">
        <xsl:text>text/css</xsl:text>
    </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:element>

Select the first and last elements in a set. This will give the owners of the first and last cars in the garage.

<xsl:value-of select="/garage/car[position()=1]/owner"/>
<xsl:value-of select="/garage/car[position()=last()]/owner">

To work around the problem of the nbsp, use the below.

&#160;

test a tingy

<xsl:template name="breadcrumbs">
    <xsl:param name="curentPage" />
    <xsl:param name="nodeTree" />
    <xsl:for-each select="$nodeTree">
        <xsl:variable name="page" select="page"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="descendant::node/@id = $curentPage">
                <a href="{$page}"><xsl:value-of select="name"/></a>
                <xsl:call-template name="breadcrumbs">
                    <xsl:with-param name="curentPage" select="$curentPage" />
                    <xsl:with-param name="nodeTree" select="." />
                </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:when>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

If you have a document that describes a web site. You can create bread crubms from the following. This will produce hyper links for the ancestors of the given node. Email us if you need a complete example.

<xsl:template name="breadcrumbs">
    <xsl:param name="curentPage" />
    <xsl:param name="nodeTree" />
    <xsl:for-each select="$nodeTree">
        <xsl:variable name="page" select="page"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="descendant::node/@id = $curentPage">
                <a href="{$page}"><xsl:value-of select="name"/></a>
                <xsl:call-template name="breadcrumbs">
                    <xsl:with-param name="curentPage" select="$curentPage" />
                    <xsl:with-param name="nodeTree" select="." />
                </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:when>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

To alternate something, use the position function with choose.

<xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="(position() mod 2 = 1)" >
        <xsl:call-template name="evenChoice" />		
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:call-template name="eciohCddO"/>
    </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

this will take a given input-string and remove all things that look like elements. not true elements, but these are really string from cdata sections that have html so, one could think of this as an html stripper. it looks for < then removes until the next >, it is not robust and does not take into account not well formatted html

<xsl:template name="remove-elements-from-string">
	<xsl:param name="input-string" />
	<xsl:param name="which-angle-bracket" select="'<'" />
	<xsl:choose>
		<xsl:when test="starts-with($input-string, $which-angle-bracket)">
			<xsl:call-template name="remove-elements-from-string">
				<xsl:with-param name="input-string">
					<xsl:value-of select="substring($input-string,2)" />
				</xsl:with-param>
				<xsl:with-param name="which-angle-bracket">
					<xsl:choose>
						<xsl:when test="$which-angle-bracket='<'">
							<xsl:value-of select="'>'" />
						</xsl:when>
						<xsl:otherwise>
							<xsl:value-of select="'<'" />
						</xsl:otherwise>
					</xsl:choose>
				</xsl:with-param>
			</xsl:call-template>
		</xsl:when>
		<xsl:otherwise>
			<xsl:if test="string-length($input-string) > 1 " >
				<xsl:if test="$which-angle-bracket='<'">
					<xsl:value-of select="substring($input-string,1,1)" />
				</xsl:if>
				<xsl:call-template name="remove-elements-from-string">
					<xsl:with-param name="input-string">
						<xsl:value-of select="substring($input-string,2)" />
					</xsl:with-param>
					<xsl:with-param name="which-angle-bracket">
						<xsl:value-of select="$which-angle-bracket" />
					</xsl:with-param>
				</xsl:call-template>
			</xsl:if>
		</xsl:otherwise>	
	</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

If you need further help, just drop us a note, we can help out. Or try Ray Land's XSLT Reminders or zvon reference or the source at w3.
xslt - php example, sniptools