Using document() with relative paths

boen_robot · May 25th, 2006, 09:39 AM

Hello. I seem to be having trouble with an XSLT based menu I'm constructing.

I have a main XSLT which includes another one for the menu. The data for the menu is in it's own XML file. That said, I need to use the document() function in order to transform the menu data and still transform the main data. So far, so good. But for some reason the function isn't working as I though it would.

The important part of the main XSLT:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:include href="navigation.xsl"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
...
<div id="left">
<xsl:call-template name="navigation"/>
</div>
...
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Where navigation.xsl is

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1251"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:variable name="Nav" select="'navigation.xml'"/>
<xsl:template name="navigation">
<xsl:for-each select="document($Nav,/)">
<xsl:call-template name="menu" />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="menu">
<xsl:for-each select="document($Nav,menu)">[list]
    <xsl:for-each select="document($Nav,item)">
    <li>
    <a href="{document($Nav,link)}">
        <xsl:value-of select="document($Nav,menu/item/title)"/>
    </a>
    </li>
    <xsl:if test="document($Nav,menu)">
        <xsl:call-template select="menu"/>
    </xsl:if>
    </xsl:for-each>
</ul>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

And the problematic XML for which I need the document function.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1251"?>
<menu>
    <item>
        <title>Home</title>
        <link>#</link>
    </item>
    <item>
        <title>Products</title>
        <link>#</link>
        <menu>

        </menu>
    </item>
</menu>

The reason I'm having a template navigation to call the second template menu is that menu is suppose to be repeated for every nested menu.

The problem is that for some reason, every document() function below

Code:

<xsl:for-each select="document($Nav,menu)">

is treated as a relative path to the root of the document, not the previously selected by this for-each path (in this case- menu). It gets worse. Because of call-template which selects itself and because the root <menu> would always exist in the whole file, the template is being looped infinetly, thus eventually causing IE to crash. At the same time, FF is being wise enough to not actually select anything below

Code:

<xsl:for-each select="document($Nav,menu)">

My desired output is something like this:

Code:

[list]
    <li>
        <a href="#>Home</a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="#">Products</title>
        [list]

        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

Any ideas?

boen_robot · May 28th, 2006, 12:00 PM

Let me paraprase my question...

How do you process two XML documents simultaneously?

I mean... this would have worked if I was only transforming the navigation.xml file, but the problem is I have to transform the per-page data and add the menu at the same time.

------
<xsl:for-each select="problem"><xsl:value-of select="solution"></xsl:for-each>

mhkay · May 28th, 2006, 01:29 PM

I'm afraid I really don't understand what your code is trying to achieve. I think you have misunderstood the purpose of the second argument to the document() function, and that when you write document($Nav, x/y/z), you should be writing document($Nav)/x/y/z

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

boen_robot · May 29th, 2006, 07:24 AM

What my code is trying to achieve is what I show in the desired output (the last code). The problem is that I'm actually transforming a variety of XML files, and this menu has to be applyed on all of them. The menu's data (titles, links, maybe something else) however is in another XML, instead of being embeded in the XSLT or something, so it should be processed simultaniously with the main document.

My problem is practically that I need to somehow use relative paths on the external document, or perhaps another approach. The reason is that I don't know how deep the menu is going to be, so the same "menu to ul", "link to a" and "title to <a>'s content" transformations should be applyed for each nested list.

Up until the moment I read your post, using things after the document() function always resulted in some sort of errors. I don't know. But it worked when I tryed it then, so I guess I'll be sticking with it...

If the XPath expression for inside the document is suppose to follow after the document() fucntion, then what's it's second argument for anyway? I saw the specification, but I can't grasp what unions or whatever they are talking about.

I tryed experimenting with having different second argument and a following XPath expression, but I still don't get even near to what I'm after.

Oh, and thanks for the reply by the way.
------
<xsl:for-each select="problem"><xsl:value-of select="solution"></xsl:for-each>

mhkay · June 4th, 2006, 05:41 PM

>My problem is practically that I need to somehow use relative paths on the external document, or perhaps another approach. The reason is that I don't know how deep the menu is going to be, so the same "menu to ul", "link to a" and "title to <a>'s content" transformations should be applyed for each nested list.

This suggests to me that you need to a recursive depth-first traversal of the document using apply-templates rather than a simple selection using path expressions.

>If the XPath expression for inside the document is suppose to follow after the document() fucntion, then what's it's second argument for anyway?

If the first argument is a relative URI such as "lookup.xml", then the second argument can be used to change what it's taken as being relative to. By default, if the first argument is a string then it's relative to the stylesheet; if it's a node, then the URI is relative to that node. In practice it's very rare to use the second argument of document().

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