[xsl] using a param to determine how many columns to output...

["Simon Harvey" <harvey_simon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there,

I have written a template which matches elements and creates a table for 
each element which contains all the info from the XML document element I am 
interested in and this works fine.

The problem is that I want to be able to create another table and populate 
this second table's rows and columns with the tables returned by the first 
template I refer to above.

I have managed to stick the first set of tables in to the second but my 
problem comes in using a parameter to determine how many columns should 
appear in the table.

Usually when programming I would expect to use a for loop using the 
parameter as a test for a counter which would create a new row for each say 
2 elements. But I can't do this in XSLT...

I had a go using the element position in the array element to try do this 
but am still getting nowhere...

anyone able to suggest a suitable approach to solving this?
It's very annoying to be so close to the requirement!!!!


This is the template I have made (I hope this looks ok in a browser!)

<xsl:template name="findAndExtractPageModelItemsIntoTable">
<xsl:for-each select="void">
                       <xsl:if test="string(@property)='pageItemModels'">
                       <table border="10">
                       <tr> <!-- with this commented in at this stage you 
get items within single row-->
                       <!--
                         number of items in the array = <xsl:value-of 
select="array/@length" /><br />
                         number of cols to display = <xsl:value-of 
select="$cols" /><br />
                        -->
                        <xsl:for-each select="array/void">
                        <!-- <tr> when this is commented in then I get new 
row per item, down the page-->
                        <xsl:variable name="arrayIndex" select="@index + 
1"/>
                                   arrayIndex = <xsl:value-of 
select="$arrayIndex" />
                                   <br />
                                             <xsl:if test="$arrayIndex 
&lt;=$cols" >
                                           <td><xsl:call-template 
name="extractReportPageModelItem"/></td>

                                            </xsl:if>
                                               <xsl:if test="$arrayIndex 
&gt;=$cols" >

                                               <td><xsl:call-template 
name="extractReportPageModelItem"/></td></tr>

                                               </xsl:if>

                                   <!-- </tr> -->

                                   </xsl:for-each>

                       <!-- </tr> -->

                       </table>

                       </xsl:if>



</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>


the logic being:


For each void //void  is an element
{
   if (void is a "PageItem")
  {
           create table tag
                       create an open row tag

                       for each array/void //the element or node where I 
know the PageItem  data is
                       {
                              if this node position <= cols
                             {
                                   <td>call the template which returns a 
table itself </td>
                             }
                             if this node position >= cols
                             {
                              <td>call the template which returns a table 
itself </td><close row tag>
                              }
                        }
                   close the table tags
     }
}