Re: [xsl] Apply <xsl:number level="any"/> across a collection?

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2007-10-08 16:52 -0400, David Sewell wrote:
> Suppose I am operating on a collection of XML documents returned by
> collection("docs.xml"). Further suppose that each document node returned
> by collection() contains <p> elements that I want to number sequentially
> across the collection in my output. (And assume XSLT 2.0.)
>
> My first stab at this was along these lines:
>
>  <xsl:apply-templates select="collection('docs.xml')"/>
>
>  ... intermediate templates ...
>
>  <xsl:template match="p">
>     <xsl:copy>
>       <xsl:attribute name="number">
>         <xsl:number level="any"/>
>       </xsl:attribute>
>       <xsl:apply-templates/>
>     </xsl:copy>
>   </xsl:template>
>
> Output is all as desired except that the numbering is reset to 1
> at each document node. Is it a built-in limitation of
> xsl:number that operates within single document nodes only

XSLT 2.0 Section 12.2 reads:  "based on the position of a selected 
node within its containing document".

> , or am I
> missing some way to accomplish what I want other than putting
> the whole collection into a variable like so:
>
>   <xsl:variable name="wrapper">
>     <wrapper>
>       <xsl:sequence select="collection('docs.xml')"/>
>     </wrapper>
>   </xsl:variable>
>
> and then applying templates to $wrapper? (This works fine,
> I'm just wondering if it's the optimal solution.)

Seems fine to me ... and if the variable is not global then the 
memory taken up by the copy of the documents when the template in 
which the variable is declared ends.  If, however, your wrapper is 
global, then the memory will be taken up for the entire process.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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