Hello,

I'm currently a bit stumped on how to solve the following issue correctly. Having gone round in circles numerous times I'm admitting defeat and seeking help.

Summary: I need to combine the stuff.xml document elements into the main.xml document. The "name" attrubute of the <stuff> child elements identifies a dotted path of "name" attributes in main.xml (clash of naming there). The children and additional attributes of the <stuff> child elements are what get combined.

I'm experimenting using XML Spy software at the moment, but ultimately this will run inside a .NET 2.0 app.

I've used keys to convert the dotted path into a node from main.xml. This worked but I think my lack of understanding left me stuck there (I wasn't sure how to use the resulting element). I also tried generating the dotted paths in a function while iterating though main.xml, for comparing against the <stuff> child elements, but this is hugely inefficient.

Any prods in the right direction would be greatly appreaciated!

-- main.xml --
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<alpha name="one">
        <beta name="two">
                <gamma name="three" />
                <delta name="four" />
        </beta>
        <beta name="five">
                <gamma name="six" />
                <delta name="seven" />
        </beta>

        <epsilon name="eight" />
</alpha>


-- stuff.xml --
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<stuff>
        <gamma name="one.two.three" id="10000">foobar</gamma>
        <gamma name="one.five.six" id="10001">wibble</gamma>
        <delta name="one.two.four" id="10002">gargle</delta>
        <delta name="one.five.seven" id="10003">blarg</delta>
        <epsilon name="one.eight" id="10004">biggles</epsilon>
</stuff>


-- required output --
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<alpha name="one">
        <beta name="two">
                <gamma name="three" id="10000">foobar</gamma>
                <delta name="four" id="10002">gargle</delta>
        </beta>
        <beta name="five">
                <gamma name="six" id="10001">wibble</gamma>
                <delta name="seven" id="10003">blarg</delta>
        </beta>

        <epsilon name="eight" id="10004">biggles</epsilon>
</alpha>

Many thanks,

Paul

(Hopefully no typos into the above test xml)

As always this kind of thing is easier in XSLT 2.0. You don't state any constraints that prevent a 2.0 solution so I'll go with that.

It feels like this:

<xsl:key name="dp" match="stuff/*" use="@name"/>

<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:copy>
  <xsl:copy-of select="key('dp', string-join(ancestor-or-self::*/@name, '.'), doc('stuff.xml'))/(@id, text())"/>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>



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

Hi Michael,

I guessed it would be an embarrassingly short answer :-)

That works flawlessly. Thanks very much for your time!

Paul