Re: [xsl] Getting a predicate right

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

At 2002-07-30 12:25 -0700, Kuhns Matt wrote:
> My XML Sheet looks like this:
> ...
> In my XSL I am going through the messages and trying
> to match the attribute grp from mesg with the
> attribute id from desc.

I think you should be using keys for this ... an example is below.  I load 
a key table named "colours" with "desc" elements keyed by their "id" 
attribute.  I then look up the needed "desc" element using the key() 
function and determine the value of the "name" attribute attached to the 
element found.

> something like this:
> //test/colors/desc[@grp]/@name
> or
> //test/colors/desc[@id = @grp]/@name

You are comparing the id attribute of desc with the grp attribute of desc, 
which is why you are not getting what you want.

Note also that using "//" is *very* wasteful.  Often the performance of 
many stylesheets is optimized by finding and eliminating any use of 
"//".  Many users of XPath don't realize that looking for "//x" will find 
all "x" elements and then continue looking inside those elements for more 
"x" elements that might be nested.  Using "//x" will search *every* "x" 
element node down to the leaves of the node tree, which can take a long 
time for the tree of a big instance.

I hope this helps.

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

T:\ftemp>type matt.xml
<test>
<colors>
  <desc id="0" name="blue"/>
  <desc id="1" name="red"/>
  <desc id="2" name="white"/>
</colors>
<mesg grp="1">Hi how are you?</mesg>
<mesg grp="0">I am fine.</mesg>
<mesg grp="2">That is good.</mesg>
</test>

T:\ftemp>type matt.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
                version="1.0">

<xsl:key name="colours" match="desc" use="@id"/>

<xsl:output indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:for-each select="/test/mesg">
    <p color="{key('colours',@grp)/@name}"><xsl:apply-templates/></p>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

T:\ftemp>saxon -o matt.out matt.xml matt.xsl

T:\ftemp>type matt.out
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<p color="red">Hi how are you?</p>
<p color="blue">I am fine.</p>
<p color="white">That is good.</p>
T:\ftemp>


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