Hi,

I am working with the following XML input:

<blocks>
<block>
<start>2008-11-21T00:00:00-06:00</start>
<end>2008-11-21T05:00:00-06:00</end>
<flag>true</flag>
</block>
<block>
<start>2008-11-21T05:00:00-06:00</start>
<end>2008-11-21T010:00:00-06:00</end>
<flag>false</flag>
</block>
<block>
<start>2008-11-21T14:00:00-06:00</start>
<end>2008-11-21T20:00:00-06:00</end>
<flag>true</flag>
</block>
</blocks>

I am trying to write an XPATH expression that would build a comma delimited list of start,end values for every block that contains <flag>true</flag>. For example, the above XML would return:

outputvalue=0,5;14,20

To do this, I thought I could use the 2.0 every expression

every $block in descendant::block satisfies $block/MultiHourBlock/text() eq 'true'

with the hour-from-dateTime(start) function to generate this comma delimited list, but I am getting stuck on how to put those two expressions together to produce the output.

I am using saxon8.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

You don't want "every" here - that tests whether every item in a sequence satisfies some condition, returning true if they do.

You want the string-join function:

string-join(block[flag='true']/string-join((start,end)/hours-from-dateTime(xs:dateTime(.)),','),';')

or if you find that too cryptic

string-join(
  for $b in block[flag='true']
  return string-join(
     for $t in (start,end)
     return hours-from-dateTime(xs:dateTime(.))
     , ',')
  , ';')


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

Sorry the expanded one should be

string-join(
  for $b in block[flag='true']
  return string-join(
     for $t in $b/(start,end)
     return hours-from-dateTime(xs:dateTime($t))
     , ',')
  , ';')


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

Thanks for the direction. I implemented the code, but am receiving an error message:

"Required item type of first argument of string-join() is xs:string; supplied value has item type xs:integer."

Is the hours-from-dateTime() returning an integer? I thought it returned a string.

I am using saxon8 in Oxygen.

You need to convert the result of hours-from-dateTime to a string before you can use string-join(). concat() automatically converts to a string, but string-join() doesn't. Sorry!

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

Thanks! Works like a charm. And as always, much more elegant than my solution.