using multiple for-each

AirJar · January 14th, 2006, 09:07 PM

I'm new to XSL but picking it up pretty good. Neat functionality.

I am having a problem using multiple for-each tags. Here's my xml document. What I need to do it loop on each <question> and each <answer>. There may or may not be multiple <question> tags, will always have multiple <answer> tags in the <question>.

Any assistance is appreciated.

<response>
<id>239</id>
<message>Start</message>
<question>
<prompt>'question text goes here'</prompt>
<type>text</type>
<answer>One</answer>
<answer>Two</answer>
<answer>Three</answer>
<answer>Four</answer>
<answer>Five</answer>
</question>
<question>
<prompt>'question text goes here'</prompt>
<type>text</type>
<answer>One</answer>
<answer>Two</answer>
<answer>Three</answer>
<answer>Four</answer>
<answer>Five</answer>
</question>
</response>

AirJar · January 14th, 2006, 09:57 PM

I finally figured it out. My problem was more with the xpath than anything. I had '/' after the select in the for-each. That was the cause for the error.

Here is the xsl code if anyone has the same issues.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="html" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<xsl:for-each select="response">
<table>
<tr><td>
<xsl:value-of select="query-id"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="response-message"/>
</td>
</tr>
<xsl:for-each select="question">
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="prompt"/>
</td>
</tr>
<xsl:for-each select="answer">
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:for-each>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

mhkay · January 15th, 2006, 12:04 PM

It's difficult to see what you're doing wrong when you don't say what you're doing. The most common mistake in this area is probably failing to understand that for-each changes the context node, and that within the for-each, relative path expressions are relative to the context node established by the for-each. Code like the following should work:

<xsl:for-each select="question">
...
<xsl:for-each select="answer">

Incidentally, they are elements, not tags. An element usually has two tags, a start tag and an end tag. So if you have two xsl:for-each elements, you have four xsl:for-each tags...

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference