Hello

I'm trying to merge nodes inside <book.content> node. How it works is that only when a <book.content> node is preceded by node named <close> then <book.content> gets closed and a new <book.content> starts. Otherwise <book.content> goes on merging whatever comes in it's way.

Note: There might be many occurences of <close> node at other places but we have to check only for ones who have next node as <book.content>.

<books>
 <book.content>
   <Topic>ABC</Topic>
   <author>123</author>
 </book.content>

 <book.content>
   <Topic>DEF</Topic>
   <author>456</author>
 </book.content>

  <close>
    <Index>aaa</index>
    <pages>111</pages>
  </close>

  <Noname>
    <useless>one</useless>
  </Noname>

  <close>
    <Index>bbb</index>
    <pages>222</pages>
  </close>

  <book.content>
    <Topic>GHI</Topic>
    <author>789</author>
  </book.content>
<books>


Output:
<books>
 <book.content>
   <Topic>ABC</Topic>
   <author>123</author>
 <s></book.content></s>

 <s><book.content></s>
   <Topic>DEF</Topic>
   <author>456</author>
 <s></book.content></s>

  <close>
    <Index>aaa</index>
    <pages>111</pages>
  </close>

  <Noname>
    <useless>one</useless>
  </Noname>

  <close>
    <Index>bbb</index>
    <pages>222</pages>
  </close>

  <s><book.content></s>
    </book.content>

  <book.content>
    <Topic>GHI</Topic>
    <author>789</author>
  </book.content>
<books>

Here, the last <book.content> does not have any following <close> node after it so it can be closed without merging other nodes.

anybody..any idea how to proceed with it in ver1.0.

Am I in the right direction...plz help

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
<xsl:template match="node()|@*">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="//book.content">
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="preceding-sibling[node()='close']">
                <xsl:element name="/book.content">
                <xsl:apply-templates/>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:apply-templates/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>

    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Sorry, but positional markup can be difficult to process. Any good reason why you're stuck with version 1.0?

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

It's a positional grouping problem, much easier in 2.0 using xsl:for-each-group group-starting-with. In 1.0 it's best tackled using sibling recursion and is much trickier, when I'm teaching this exercise usually takes a couple of hours and people get very confused by it.

The general approach is

(a) the template for the parent element does apply-templates to its first child,

(b) the template for the first child in a group does

<group>
  <apply-templates select="following-sibling::*[1]"/>
</group>
<apply-templates select="following-sibling::close/following-sibling::*[1]"/>

(c) the template for the close element does nothing (to terminate the recursion)

(d) the template for every other child element outputs itself then applies templates to its immediately following sibling.


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

Okay...points taken that I should now change to ver 2.0

Can somebody direct me to a good example of "xsl:for-each-group group-starting-with"? tried to google and there are too many...too confusing for a beginner.

Or can somebody try to solve the problem I have here?

>Can somebody direct me to a good example of "xsl:for-each-group group-starting-with"?

Sure. Since you're on a Wrox forum, read my sig.

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

Thanks Mike...I've already noticed your siggy and am really impressed that you actually post replies here.

Anyway after little bit of reading I tried doing this but ofcourse it's not correct and need help here.


?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="node()|@*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="books">
 <xsl:for-each-group select="*" group-by="book.content">
   <book.content>
    <xsl:value-of select="current-group()/book.content">
       <xsl:apply-templates select="."/>
    </xsl:value-of>
   <xsl:if test="preceding-sibling[name()='close']">
     </book.content>
   </xsl:if>
 </xsl:for-each-group>
</xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="close">
    <close>
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </close>
    </xsl:template>

You can't output half an element (i.e. the start or end tag) seperately. You're not writing text to the output, you are writing nodes to a result node tree - so there is no such thing has half a node. This means your <if></book.content></if> wont work.

You could try using group-ending-with="close" then you will have a group of items, the last of which will always be a close element.



/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/

You basically want something like

<xsl:for-each-group select="*" group-ending-with="close">
  <book.content>


  </book.content>
</xsl:for-each-group>

But before you try coding it, please, do some reading. So far, you seem to be relying on guesswork.

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