Re: [xsl] Is it possible to group by name() ?

Subject: Re: [xsl] Is it possible to group by name() ?
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:05:44 -0400
Frank,

At 04:54 PM 9/17/2002, you wrote:
I would appreciate some help on this. I have an XML that looks like this:

<n0>
        <n1>
                <a>text</a>
                <b>text</b>
                <c>text</c>
        </n1>
        <n1>
                <a>text</a>
                <c>text</c>
        </n1>
        <n1>
                <a>text</a>
                <b>text</b>
                <d>text</d>
        </n1>
</n0>

And what I would like to have is a list of the different nodes inside n1
nodes.
In the example above, the result should be: a,b,c,d.

Is it possible to do something like this ?
<xsl:key name="groupbyname" match="/n0/n1/*" use="name()"/>

And then use the muenchian method ? But how ?

You're right on track.


When using the Muenchian method, remember it works by doing two things. First, grouping, which you have down (your key does this). Then, de-duplicating by picking one node from each group -- using it to fire off processing the whole group if necessary (in your case it's not). Once you've mastered the two steps, it's only a matter of deciding how you want to traverse your nodes to get to them.

So you could do:

<xsl:for-each select="/n0/n1/*">
  <!-- iterates over all the candidate nodes -->
  <xsl:if test="count(.|key('groupbyname', name())[1]) = 1">
    <!-- throws away all but the first of each group -->
    <xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
    <!-- outputs the name you want -->
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>

Similarly, an entire stylesheet could look like:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
                xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>

<xsl:output method="text"/>

<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<!-- cleans things up a bit -->

<xsl:key name="groupbyname" match="/n0/n1/*" use="name()"/>

<xsl:template match="/n0/n1/*[count(.|key('groupbyname', name())[1]) = 1]">
  <!-- puts the selection logic into a template match -->
  <xsl:value-of select="concat(name(), '&#xA;')"/>
  <!-- inserting an extra line break for clarity -->
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="text()">
  <!-- suppress text nodes as uninteresting -->
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Fun, huh?

Cheers,
Wendell


====================================================================== Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com 17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635 Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631 Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================


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