Re: [xml-dev] XSLT stylesheet looping through the same node (recursion?)

Hi Michael,

We are finally seeing the light at the end of this tunnel. I managed to extract every element values in <p> (single/multiples) except one with the following structure:

<p>

<strong>Hobbies:</strong>

<a shape="rect" href="http://www.hobbies.com/fishing" title="Shark Hunting">Coral Bay</a>

fishing

</p>

I tried the following combinations to get the value 'fishing' without much luck:

<xsl:template match="ns:p[ns:strong='Hobbies:']">

<xsl:for-each select="text()[normalize-space() != '']">

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="ns:p[ns:strong='Hobbies:']">

<xsl:for-each select="../ns:a/text()[normalize-space() != '']">

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

Yet an earlier approach such as the one below did picked up the value 'fishing':

<xsl:template match="/">

<xsl:for-each select="/ns:html/ns:body/ns:div[@id='content']/ns:p/ns:strong">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="contains(.,'Hobbies:')">

</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:for-each>>

</employee>

</xsl:template>

Naturally, I would like to use the pattern matching approach (later) to complete the extraction of all element values in the same document.

Again, your invaluable suggestion is much appreciated.

Jack

From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
To: Jack Bush <netbeansfan@yahoo.com.au>; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Sent: Wednesday, 28 January, 2009 12:13:03 AM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] XSLT stylesheet looping through the same node (recursion?)

Having got this template rule working, you can now simply add additional rules, for example

<xsl:template match="ns:p[ns:strong='Nearest Hotels:']">

<xsl:for-each select="text()[normalize-space() != '']">

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

That's the beauty of doing it through template rules rather than big xsl:choose statements - it makes your code very easy to modify and extend.

Michael Kay

http://www.saxonica.com/

From: Jack Bush [mailto:netbeansfan@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: 27 January 2009 13:03
To: Michael Kay; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] XSLT stylesheet looping through the same node (recursion?)

Hi Michael,

Below is the output from your helpful suggestion:

( 1 ) <area>

( 2 ) <interest>Tennis</interest>

( 3 ) <interest>Movie</interest>

( 4 ) <interest>Swimming</interest>

( 5 ) </area>

( a ) <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
( b ) xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
( c ) xmlns:ns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
( d ) exclude-result-prefixes="ns">
( e )
( f ) <xsl:template match="/">

( g )<area>

( h )<xsl:apply-templates select="//ns:p"/>

( i ) </area>

( j )</xsl:template>

( k )<xsl:template match="ns:p[ns:strong='Nearest Hotels:']">

( l ) <xsl:for-each select="text()[normalize-space() != '']">

( m )<nearest_hotels><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space()"/></nearest_hotels>

( n ) </xsl:for-each>

( o ) </xsl:template>

( p )<xsl:template match="ns:p"/>

( q )

( r )</xsl:stylesheet>

This is the closest thing to what I wanted except that I would it to co-exist with the existing working XSL statements:

( i ) I could not getting another list of element values (e.g.. favourite songs...) that comes immediately after the <Interest> element. This may be due to the context node having been changed by when running the aboved stylesheet.

( ii ) There are other element values that I need to retrieve from the same document, where some is made up of a single value while others may have multiple occurrences. I will need to some how include the aboved code segment into the following existing working stylesheet responsible for retrieving other single element values, using the current context node where possible:

<xsl:template match="/">

<area>

<xsl:for-each select="/ns:html/ns:body/ns:div[@id='content']/ns:p/ns:strong">

<xsl:if test="contains(.,'Firstname:')">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="contains(.,'Firstname:')">

<firstname><xsl:value-of select="../ns:a"/></firstname>

</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>

<firstname>Unknown</firstname>

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:if>

<xsl:if test="contains(.,'Surname:')">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="contains(.,'Surname:')">

<surname><xsl:value-of select="../text()"/></surname>

</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>

<surname>Unknown</surname>

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

.......

Thank you so much for the on-going guidances,

Jack

From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>
To: Jack Bush <netbeansfan@yahoo.com.au>; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Sent: Tuesday, 27 January, 2009 12:54:23 AM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] XSLT stylesheet looping through the same node (recursion?)

It looks to me as if you would be better off using pattern matching

<xsl:template match="/">

<area>

    <xsl:apply-templates select="//p"/>

</area>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="ns:p[ns:strong='Interest:']">

<xsl:for-each select="text()[normalize-space() != '']">

    <interest><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space()"/></interest>

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="ns:p"/>

Michael Kay

http://www.saxonica.com/

From: Jack Bush [mailto:netbeansfan@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: 26 January 2009 13:31
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: [xml-dev] XSLT stylesheet looping through the same node (recursion?)

Hi All,

I would like to get all the content/text in <p> node from the XML document where <p> has a child node <strong>Interest:<strong>. Below is the listing of both XML document and XSLT stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE html (View Source for full doctype...)>

- <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

- <head>

- <body

   ........

- ><div id="container">

+ <div id="header">

<div id="postmark" />

- <div id="content">

+ <div id="as1">

........

<h1>Employee Detail</h1>

- <p>

<strong>Interest:</strong>

<br />

Tennis

<br />

Movie

<br />

Swimming

<br />

......

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"

xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"

xmlns:ns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"

exclude-result-prefixes="ns">

<xsl:template match="/">

<area>

- <xsl:for-each select="/ns:html/ns:body/ns:div[@id='content']/ns:p/ns:strong">

- <xsl:if test="contains(.,'Interest:')">

- <xsl:choose>

- <xsl:when test="contains(.,'Interest:')">

- <interest>

<xsl:value-of select="../text()" />

</interest>

</xsl:when>

- <xsl:otherwise>

<interest>Unknown</interest>

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:if>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

The transformation process produces the following output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<title>Employee Detail</title>

<body>

    <h1>Employee Detail</h1>

      <interest>Tennis</interest>

</body>

</title>

</html>

One possible solution is by using recursion to go through the list of values on nodes but I am cannot think of how this could be done. Perhaps my difficulty is that I don’t know how to navigate down the list of interest of the same node using xsl command. Most of the Googled articles consisted of searching for the same type of element a cross multiple nodes, where as I am looking all the values (same type anyway) in a single node.

Below is the JDOM XPath solution to get the same list of values:

XPath interestxpath = XPath.newInstance("/ns:html/ns:body/ns:div[@id='content']/ns:p[10]/node()");

interestxpath.addNamespace("ns", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml");

java.util.List interest_list =                       interestxpath.selectNodes(employeejdomDocument);

Iterator interest_iterator = interest_list.iterator();

while (interest_iterator..hasNext())

{

   interest_value = ((org.jdom.Content)interest_iterator.next()).getValue();

……

I am new to XSLT stylesheet transformation and can do with some guidances.

Many thanks again,

Jack

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