Subject: RE: [xsl] How to extract data from an element and not from its children From: "Dhunta, Vikram \(GE, Corporate\)" <vikram.dhunta@xxxxxx> Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 00:09:34 +0530 |
If it's textual content, I agree.. We certainly want to continue with <p>Hello, <b>World!</b></p> But if it's data, and since you're using xml, you obviuosly intend to imitate a real world hierarchy/structure, wouldn't the following seem strange: <hardware> <screws> This is the description of screws <screw> One </screw> </screws><screws> This is a specification of screws <screw> Two </screw> </screws></hardware> By orphaning that text without a node, you take away the (meta-)meaning of the text. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of using xml to describe data so it can be used by other readers, human and machine? To me, it gives me the same uncomfortable feeling as someone doing the following in html: <table> <tr><td>Hello</td></tr>whoa whats this text doin here,..just don't belong! <tr><td>World</td></tr> </table> Rgds (btw I'm a newbie here, I like this list, and if such debates are considered spam, please don't reply and let it die :) ) -----Original Message----- From: Wendell Piez [mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 11:58 AM To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: [xsl] How to extract data from an element and not from its children At 11:42 AM 12/6/2006, it was written: >Would you be better off by re-designing your xml as: ><text> ><content>This text is some test </content> ><content><emph>text</emph></content> ><content>.</content> ></text> > >Somehow that text within the xml doesn't seem correct - it looks >orphaned, but I guess the experts can answer that.. Would one really want to have <p><content>I have a paragraph, which contains </content><inline>inline markup</inline><content> inside it.</content></p> On the contrary, XML's capability of modeling mixed content (the technical term for this sort of thing) is one of its greatest strengths. As for the question, in XSLT terms, the XML markup: <text>This text is some test <emph>text</emph>.</text> is parsed into a model that looks like this: element 'text' text node (value: 'This text is some test ') element 'emph' text node (value: 'text') text node (value: '.') These XML document structures are traversed and queried in XSLT using not functions, but XPath expressions (XPath includes a function library, but also more). In this case, given the 'text' element as context, the XPath expression "text()", short for "child::text()", will return both the text node children of the element (its first and third children). If you want the value of only the first of these, you can write "text()[1]". In XPath 1.0, simply "text()" will often get you that result, but since the rules have changed in XPath 2.0 it's perhaps best to learn not to rely on that. How you use that depends on why you need the expression, which wasn't given in the question. 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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