Re: [xsl] Need help combing two elements

["Fatbob" <fatbob73@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Wendell, thanks for replying.

> Fatbob,
>
> At 05:44 PM 3/26/2009, you wrote:
> >Is it possible to combine two elements using XSL so that they display as
> >one?
>
> Yes.
>
> Or more precisely, one would not "combine two elements into one", but
> rather create one element in the result that combined information
> from more than one element in the source. (XSLT does nothing to the
> input. It simply looks at it to help decide what to put in the output.)
>

I worded it incorrectly, but yes I don't want to change the data itself,
simply how it is displayed.

> >Here is a sample of my XML file...
> >
> ><Row Type="Data">
> >  <Cell longDate="1143122100140" ChangeContext="FID=50020"
ShowLink="true"
> >Status="Normal">Mar 23, 2006</Cell>
> >  <Cell ChangeContext="FID=50020" ShowLink="true"
> >Status="Normal">08:44</Cell>
> ></Row>
> >
> >As you can see the first cell is a date and the second is a time, I need
to
> >combine and also convert that date to yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm format.
> >
> >So the example above would end up displaying like 2006-05-23 08:44. Well
the
> >time is fine, just the date needs to be converted.
> >
> >Is this possible to do in XSL?
>
> It is.
>
> The details of how best to do it would depend on things you haven't
> told us, such as how regular and predictable your input data is, and
> what you want to happen in edge cases.
>

The data is very predictable. It will always be as I've shown above, so I
have no worries about that. I'm not sure what you mean by "edge cases". I'm
very new to XSL, as demonstrated by my use of incorrect terminology.

> But in general, the casting of values such as "Mar 23, 2006" to
> "2006-05-03" is going to be more work than the combining of values
> from two (or several) elements into one.
>

Yes, I thought formatting dates would be much easier, but it does appear to
be quite tricky.

> Cheers,
> Wendell
>
>
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