[xsl] generating a repeatable unique id

Subject: [xsl] generating a repeatable unique id
From: "Sebastian Rahtz" <sebastian.rahtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:28:45 +0100
Consider this skeleton document:

<root>
<front>
<div/><div/><div/>
</front>
<body>
<div/><div/><div/>
</body>
</root>

I want to generate a repeatable ID for any <div> on the fly. 
The idea is to process  the document and return a list of sections;
each will be a link to the same document, with a parameter containing
an ID for the section. So in URI parlance, I'll ask for "index.xml"
now, which will contain generated links to eg "index.xml?ID=div33".

All well and easy, if the <div> elements have ID attributes, but they
don't. And generate-id() is not guarenteed to be the same on the next
iteration (well, it isn't with libxslt, at least). So I thought I'd
make myself a key table, which lets me identify a target <div> quickly
when the key value is passed in:

 <xsl:key name="DIVS" 
   match="div" 
   use="concat(name(..),concat('_',concat(name(.),concat('_',count(preceding-sibling::div)))))"/>

This works, but the procesing cost looks to be silly, doing that
count of preceding-siblings for every div.

Can anyone suggest a better system? or am I simply barking up the
wrong tree?

maybe the best answer is to insist on ID attributes for my <div> elements...

Sebastian


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


Current Thread