Re: [xsl] Applying an XSLT-file to specific nodes within an XML file

[Brandon Ibach <brandon.ibach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

It's hard to say exactly where you'd need to put this without seeing
how your XSLT is laid out, but I think you can get what you want by
placing something like this in the right place:

     <xsl:apply-templates select="//msDesc[msItem/title = 'AAAA']"/>

If you can place this in the template that processes your "mss"
element, you can drop the "//" at the beginning of the select
expression, which would be better for performance.  If it needs to go
somewhere else, you'll need to modify the expression a bit
differently.

-Brandon :)

Brandon Ibach
Developer, Single-Sourcing Solutions, Inc.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Mark Aussems<mark.aussems@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Hopefully someone can assist me in solving a (probably rather basic)
problem
> related to restricting the execution of an XSLT file to a specific part of
> an XML file.
>
> My XML file looks like this (very simplified):
>
> <mss>
>      <msDesc>
>              <msItem>
>                      <title>AAAA</title>
>              </msItem>
>      </msDesc>
>      <msDesc>
>              <msItem>
>                      <title>BBBB</title>
>              </msItem>
>      </msDesc>
>      <msDesc>
>              <msItem>
>                      <title>CCCC</title>
>              </msItem>
>      </msDesc>
> </mss>
>
> I have written an XSLT file which transforms my entire XML into a nice HTML
> file. I would now like to restrict the XSLT file so that it ONLY transforms
> the <msDesc> nodes which have a <title> tag with the value 'AAAA'. So, in
> simpler terms, I would like to say to my XSL file:
>
> 1. Find all <msDesc> nodes which have a <title> tag with the value 'AAAA'.
> 2. Apply the following <xsl:template>  transformations, but only to the
> <msDesc> nodes specified above.
> 3. [And then all my <xsl:template> transformations]
>
> A possible solution to this would be to write a simple XQuery script to
> extract the relevant <msDesc> nodes and put them in a separate XML file,
> which can then be transformed. That requires a lot of manual labour
> (especially since my titles go from AAAA to PPPP...), so I was wondering
> whether there is a work-around or short-cut within XSL?
>
> I hope this makes sense. I'm sure there's something obvious I'm missing...
>
> Many thanks in advance,
> Mark