repetitive xml

JamesHurrell · March 12th, 2008, 01:15 PM

I have the following xml there are thousands of items.
Is there a way with xslt to "loop" through them displaying each on the page?
Any help would be great.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml:stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="myxsl.xsl" ?>
<ControlledList>
<Item Id="1" ConceptId="1">
    <Name>name1</Name>
    <ScopeNotes>notes1</ScopeNotes>
    <HistoryNotes>history1</HistoryNotes>
</Item>
<Item Id="2" ConceptId="2">
    <Name>name2</Name>
    <ScopeNotes>notes2</ScopeNotes>
    <HistoryNotes>history2</HistoryNotes>
</Item>
</ControlledList>

mhkay · March 12th, 2008, 01:36 PM

Actually you don't need to write a loop, because that's what the XSLT processor does by default. Just write a template rule to process Item elements:

<xsl:template match="Item">
  <h2>Item <xsl:value-of select="@Id"/> (Name <xsl:value-of select="Name"/></h2>
  <p><xsl:value-of select="ScopeNotes"/></p>
</xsl:template>

In practice you might want to add some wrapper stuff:

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

It's the apply-templates that does the "looping".

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

JamesHurrell · March 12th, 2008, 01:51 PM

That's great.
Thanks a lot, I'd have been sat here all night working that out.

Cheers for the help

newbieboobers · March 12th, 2008, 02:05 PM

Is it considered better practice to define templates for sub-items instead of looping through?

mhkay · March 12th, 2008, 04:24 PM

Many people recommend use of template rules (called "push mode") as better programming practice than using for-each and call-template ("pull mode"). But both have their place. The big advantage of template rules is that your code is more resilient to change in the structure of the input document.

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