Hi, I have an XML source document that ressembles the following structure.

<testsuite>
    <testcase classname="x">
        ...
    </testcase>
        .
        .
        .
    <testcase classname="z">
        ...
    </testcase>
        .
        .
        .
</testsuite>

What I need to do is create an html table for each
testcase with the same value for their classname attribute.

So in the example above, I'll have 2 html tables, 1 for all those
testcases with classname="x" and 1 for all those testcases with classname="z".

I'm having problems keeping track of things due to the fact I'm not used to working with XSLT variables. My initial thought was to use a series of if statements, however I came across problems because I was looking to open tables in one IF and close them in another, the XSLT processor then complained that I hadn't closed certain tags.

Could somebody please give me a rough outline of what they feel might be an appropriate structure for this transform.

Thanks.

Take a look at Muenchian grouping, if you're using XSLT 1.0. If using version 2.0 you can use the native features, xsl:for-each-group.
http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/gro...muenchian.html

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

So if I use <xsl:for-each-group select="testcase" group-by="testcase/@classname">

will this run once for each different classname that it finds?

The problem is known as "grouping".

Grouping is much easier in XSLT 2.0 by using <xsl:for-each-group>.

For 1.0 solutions (one might say workarounds) see http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/grouping, or any XSLT textbook.

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

The group-by expression is relative to the selected elements, so you don't want to repeat "testcase" in the path.

Yes, the body of the for-each-group is processed once for each distinct value of the grouping key. Within the body, you can access the contents of the group using the current-group() function.

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

Could I also ask. I'm looking to also transform this same source to pdf. Is there an xslt-fo processor I can use that uses saxon or some other xslt 2.0 compliant processor?

Sorry just answered my own question.

Just incase anyone every looks for an answer in future -
I converted to xml to fo in saxon >temp.fo - then I converted from fo to pdf in Apache FOP.