Simple sorting issue

dcschafer · August 4th, 2009, 07:31 AM

Thought this would be a simple issue to solve. I want to simply kept the input document structure intact and sort the customer nodes based on the CompanyName. Runtime target is .NET 2.0. I've been testing in Stylus Studio.

The document structure is reproduced correctly but I haven't been able to find the correct selects to make the sort happen.

Thanks.

Sample input:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xmldata>
  <Customers>
    <CustomerID>15</CustomerID>
    <AccessKey>P</AccessKey>
    <BillingAddress1>151 Duck Blind Place</BillingAddress1>
    <City>Myrtle Beach</City>
    <CompanyName>Wayside Kennel Gear</CompanyName>
    <EmailAddress>[email protected]</EmailAddress>
    <PostalCode>29588</PostalCode>
    <State>SC</State>
  </Customers>
  <Customers>
    <CustomerID>21</CustomerID>
    <AccessKey>P</AccessKey>
    <BillingAddress1>8794 Easton Road</BillingAddress1>
    <City>Ottsville</City>
    <CompanyName>The Yuppie Puppy</CompanyName>
    <EmailAddress>[email protected]</EmailAddress>
    <PostalCode>18092</PostalCode>
    <State>PA</State>
  </Customers>
  <Customers>
    <CustomerID>22</CustomerID>
    <AccessKey>P</AccessKey>
    <BillingAddress1>305 Gordon Drive</BillingAddress1>
    <City>Exton</City>
    <CompanyName>Pickering Valley Feed</CompanyName>
    <EmailAddress>[email protected]</EmailAddress>
    <PostalCode>19341</PostalCode>
    <State>PA</State>
  </Customers>
</xmldata>

XSLT

Code:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />

	<xsl:template match="xmldata/Customers">
		<xsl:apply-templates>
		  <xsl:sort select="CompanyName"/>
		</xsl:apply-templates>
	</xsl:template>

	<xsl:template match="/">
		<xsl:copy-of select="*" >
		</xsl:copy-of>
	</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

mhkay · August 4th, 2009, 07:45 AM

You confused me, and perhaps yourself, by using the element name "Customers" to represent a single customer. You can't sort the customers in the rule that processes each individual customer, it has to be done in the rule that processes the parent element. And your second template rule is wrong because it simply copies the input document intact without every firing the template rules for the children. You only need one template rule here:

Code:

<xsl:template match="xmldata">
  <xsl:for-each select="Customers">
     <xsl:sort select="CompanyName"/>
     <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

Of course you can use an apply-templates if you want to do further processing of the customer elements, but if you just want to copy them, the above is simpler.