I want to compare two nodesets using several classifiers. If there is a match on each classifier, return true.

The classifiers are identified in two levels of delimited pairs:

source1,target1;source2,target2;source3,target3

If I knew how many classifiers I was dealing with, I could use (ignoring context of each cell):

test="row[ cell[@type=source1] = cell[@type=target1] ]"/>

Is there an efficient way to dynamically determine a match depending on a variable number of comparisons?

Sorry, I don't understand the problem from this description. Please show an example of the input to your transformation and the desired output.

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

Sorry about the incomplete post.

Primary XML Input:

<row index="1">
   <cell name="instruction"/>
   <cell name="document">file.doc</cell>
   <cell name="path">Archive/documents/</cell>
</row>

Secondary XML Input:

<row index="40">
   <cell name="instruction"/>
   <cell name="file">file.doc</cell>
   <cell name="location">Archive/documents/</cell>
</row>

XSLT:

The following will be passed in as a parameter. The number of classifier pairs is unknown:
<xsl:param name="classifiers">document:file,path:location</xsl:param>

What I need to do:

Locate (and capture) row in the secondary input that maps to the primary input using the unknown number of classifiers. I am looking for the most efficient way to solve this problem.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I'm not sure why you're using a non-XML syntax for the parameter. It would simplify the problem to use an XML syntax; if you have to parse the string first to produce the XML, we can handle that as a separate problem.

But I still need to ask more questions about the requirement.

Are there multiple rows in either or both of the inputs?

Are you looking for a match of a row in input2 with any row in input1, or with a specific row in input1? If the latter, what's the correspondence between the rows that must match: by position? by value of the name in the first cell?

When document:file appears as a classifier, what exactly does it mean? That the cell named document in input1 has to have the same value as the cell named file in input2? Do these cells have to be in the same position within the row? What happens if either row doesn't have a cell with the given name?

What's the significance of cells (such as "instruction" in your example) for which there is no classifier? Are they simply ignored, or do they have to match in both rows?

Finally, this is going to be a lot easier in XSLT 2.0 (most things are). Do you have any technology constraints?

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

There are multiple rows in both XML documents and I am looking for a match between a row in input1 and a row in input2. The classifiers define the mapping scheme. So, in the following XML, the rows match because

$input1/cell[@name='document'] = $input2/cell[@name='file']
and
$input1/cell[@name='path'] = $input2/cell[@name='location']

Primary XML Input:

<row index="1">
   <cell name="instruction"/>
   <cell name="document">file.doc</cell>
   <cell name="path">Archive/documents/</cell>
</row>

Secondary XML Input:

<row index="40">
   <cell name="instruction"/>
   <cell name="file">file.doc</cell>
   <cell name="location">Archive/documents/</cell>
</row>

The is an unknown number of classifiers, so the following XML might be valid:


<row index="1">
   <cell name="instruction"/>
   <cell name="type">word file</cell>
   <cell name="document">file.doc</cell>
   <cell name="path">Archive/documents/</cell>
</row>

Secondary XML Input:

<row index="40">
   <cell name="instruction"/>
   <cell name="filetype">word file</cell>
   <cell name="file">file.doc</cell>
   <cell name="location">Archive/documents/</cell>
</row>

In which case the following classifiers would be passed:
document:file,path:location,type:filetype

I am capturing the classifiers in an XML nodeset:

<xsl:variable name="MAPPING_classifiers">
<Mapping_Classifiers>
<xsl:for-each select="$tokenize_classifiers">
<xsl:variable name="tokenize_further" select="tokenize(.,':')"/>
<xsl:variable name="index"><xsl:value-of select="index-of($tokenize_classifiers,.)" /></xsl:variable>
  <xsl:element name="classifier">
    <xsl:attribute name="index">
      <xsl:value-of select="$index" />
    </xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:for-each select="$tokenize_further">
      <xsl:element name="class">
        <xsl:value-of select="." />
      </xsl:element>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:element>
</xsl:for-each>
</Mapping_Classifiers>
</xsl:variable>

Thanks. So it looks something like

$doc2//row[
   some $r in $doc1//row satisfies
     every $c in $MAPPING_classifiers/classifier satisfies
      (./cell[@name=$c/class[2]] and $r/cell[@name=$c/class[1]])]

Incidentally, I would write this:

<xsl:variable name="MAPPING_classifiers">
<Mapping_Classifiers>
<xsl:for-each select="$tokenize_classifiers">
<xsl:variable name="tokenize_further" select="tokenize(.,':')"/>
<xsl:variable name="index"><xsl:value-of select="index-of($tokenize_classifiers,.)" /></xsl:variable>
  <xsl:element name="classifier">
    <xsl:attribute name="index">
      <xsl:value-of select="$index" />
    </xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:for-each select="$tokenize_further">
      <xsl:element name="class">
        <xsl:value-of select="." />
      </xsl:element>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:element>
</xsl:for-each>
</Mapping_Classifiers>
</xsl:variable>

as:

<xsl:variable name="MAPPING_classifiers" as="element()*">
<xsl:for-each select="$tokenize_classifiers">
  <classifier index="{position()}">
    <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(.,':')">
      <class>
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
      </class>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </classifier>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:variable>

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

If my current context is the row for input1:

<xsl:template match="row">

Would the expression then change to:

<xsl:variable name="this" select="current()"/>
<xsl:variable name="match" select="$doc2//row[
   some $r in $this satisfies
     every $c in $MAPPING_classifiers/classifier satisfies
      (./cell[@name=$c/class[2]] and $r/cell[@name=$c/class[1]])]"/>

For some reason, it is picking up every row in input2. I assume I am missing something.

Thanks again.

There's nothing in my expression that depends on the context node. But of course it may be wrong - I'm leaving you to debug it! Certainly changing "some $r in $doc1//row" to "some $r in $this" is nonsense - you never need to say "some $r in $this" when $this is a singleton. But perhaps you're trying to solve a different problem instead of finding all the rows in doc2 that match some row in doc1, you're looking for the rows in doc2 that match a specific row in doc1? In that case you don't need "some $r in $doc1//row satisfies" at all, you just need to replace $r with current().

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