Re: [xsl] How to use arrays in xsl

[Abel Braaksma Online <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jitendra Kharche wrote:

> Hi all,
> I am facing a problem while writing an xsl.
> In my xml I have a comma separated values (csv) list. On each of the
> value in this list I want to do some processing. For that I want to
> parse the csv string and store it into an array and pass the array to a
> separate template from processing. Can we do this in xsl?
>
> Regards,
> Jitendra Kharche
> Geometric Software Solutions Co. Ltd.
> Work: +91-20-2290 6351
Hi Jitendra,

XSLT works with node trees, which you may view as something as a 
hierarchical array. An element on the same node level can be accessed 
using [] syntax, like in languages such as C and Java. And you can 
"loop" like in those languages using the for-each construct. But XSLT is 
not like those languages. XSLT is a declarative language and comes 
closer to Lisp than to imparative languages like C, Java, Ruby, VB etc.

What comes close to your problem I think is this (XSLT 2.0):

<xsl:variable name="csv-contents" >
    <!-- loop through the lines of the CSV file (replace unparsed-text 
function with your CSV string or text-node) -->
    <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(unparsed-text('some_csv_file.txt', 
'UTF-8'), '\n|\r')">
         <row>
              <!-- loop through the cells of the current line -->
              <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(., ';')" >
                   <cell><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/></cell>
              </xsl:for-each>
         </row>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:variable>


You can now use this variable $csv-contents as a tree anywhere you like 
(it's your "array" of nodes, pass it on to your "separate template", 
included or otherwise). In XSLT 1.0 you cannot do such a thing (you 
cannot built a temporary tree and use it again and you cannot use 
tokenize). But as Mukul Gandhi pointed out, there are solutions around. 
I suggest chapter 2.9 of the XSLT Cookbook (O'Reilly), it worked for me.

Cheers!
Abel