Pickingup sub elements from its parent

vikkiefd · March 14th, 2008, 01:28 AM

The following is my scenario:
Actually I want to pickup a set of child elements of its parent.These set of child elements may occur multiple times also within that parent, but they are not covered with any more container element.

The following is my input xml:
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?>
<DataSet>
<FirstData>
   <DataDesc></DataDesc>
   <DataType></DataType>
   <Item></Item>
   <Description></Description>
   <Item></Item>
   <Description></Description>
</FirstData>
</DataSet>

The output should be like this:
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?>
<DataSet>
<FirstData>
  <DataDesc></DataDesc>
  <DataType></DataType>
  <Data no="1">
   <Item></Item>
   <Description></Description>
  </Data>
  <Data no="2">
   <Item></Item>
   <Description></Description>
  </Data>
</FirstData>
</DataSet>

How to achieve this output. Please help me to resolve this. Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Viki

mhkay · March 14th, 2008, 03:12 AM

So long as Item and Description always come together as a pair, you can do

<xsl:template match="FirstData">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="DataDesc | DataType | Item"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Item">
<Data no="{position()}">
  <xsl:copy-of select=".|following-sibling::Description[1]"/>
</Data>
</xsl:template>

If the structure is more complex, for example an Item followed by several Descriptions, then you have a positional grouping problem - easy in XSLT 2.0 with xsl:for-each-group, but quite challenging in XSLT 1.0.

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

vikkiefd · March 14th, 2008, 09:31 AM

Thanks for the response. Here the "Description" element may or may not come. So at that time, it will pickup the "Description" element available after the next "Item" element. Then how I can handle to avoid this.

Regards,
Viki

Martin Honnen · March 14th, 2008, 09:34 AM

Try

Code:

<xsl:template match="Item">
<Data no="{position()}">
  <xsl:copy-of select=".|following-sibling::*[1][self::Description]"/>
</Data>
</xsl:template>

mhkay · March 14th, 2008, 10:28 AM

following-sibling[1][self::Description]

will select the next sibling element only if it is a Description element.

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

mhkay · March 14th, 2008, 10:29 AM

Sorry, for

following-sibling[1][self::Description]

read

following-sibling::*[1][self::Description]

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