Re: Determining if the first child is a para element

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken,

At 10:15 AM 11/9/00 +0000, Jeni wrote:
> So, to test whether the first child node of
> the current node is an element, use:
>
>   <xsl:if test="child::node()[1][self::*]">
>      ...
>   </xsl:if>

Also be careful in this case that you have accounted for the possibility of 
any whitespace-only text nodes. So, for example, if your document read:

<CHAPTER>
  <para>Here's my first child element, a para.</para>
...
</CHAPTER>

Jeni's test above will fail on account of the whitespace-only text node 
preceding the para element (it contains a carriage return and two space 
characters).

Adjust for this by saying

<xsl:strip-space elements="CHAPTER"/>

at the top level, or altering your test (somewhat horribly) to:

<xsl:if test="child::node()[not(.=normalize-space(.))][1][self::para]">
   ...
</xsl:if>

Jeni's test for whether the first element child is a para is still good, of 
course, since the whitespace-only nodes won't come into play then.

Regards,
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
======================================================================


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