Sort Descending?

BobSSC · February 24th, 2010, 05:01 PM

Hi Folks -

I'm trying to get my head around sorting in XSL but I'm obviously doing something wrong. I've looked at a BUNCH of examples in books as well as on the web to no avail. I have the following sample XML document with 3 identifiers that need to be sorted in descending order as though they were numeric:

Code:

<OrderResponse xmlns="urn:cidx:names:specification:ces:schema:all:5:0" Version="5.0">
<ResponseStatus>
<ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier Agency="RAPIDResponseRejectionTable">091</ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier>
<ResponseStatusReasonDescription></ResponseStatusReasonDescription>
</ResponseStatus>
<ResponseStatus>
<ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier Agency="RAPIDResponseRejectionTable">092</ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier>
<ResponseStatusReasonDescription></ResponseStatusReasonDescription>
</ResponseStatus>
<ResponseStatus>
<ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier Agency="RAPIDResponseRejectionTable">099</ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier>
<ResponseStatusReasonDescription></ResponseStatusReasonDescription>
</ResponseStatus>
</OrderResponse>

My stylesheet is the following:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:template match="OrderResponse">
<xsl:for-each select="ResponseStatus">
<xsl:sort select="ResponseStatusReasonIdentifier" data-type="number" order="descending"/>
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

What I expected to happen was for the transformation to output 099,092,091 - what I get is 091,092,099 which is document order. What have I screwed up?

Thanks!

mhkay · February 24th, 2010, 05:22 PM

Are you sure your template is even being invoked? Because your input elements are in a namespace, and you make no attempt to match the namespace. Google for XSLT default namespace. I suspect the stylesheet is just applying the default template rules, which output the text nodes from the source document. That wouldn't account for the commas in your output but I can't see where they are supposed to come from anyway.

BobSSC · February 25th, 2010, 03:53 PM

Thanks Michael -

I did get quite an education in namespaces and understand why my sort wouldn't work. Removing the namespace declaration from the XML snippet allowed the sort process to work correctly.

Sorry about the commas - they weren't meant to confuse. I thought it might be clearer to list the current and expected output as comma separated values but I can see how adding the commas might create some confusion.

Thanks Again For Your Help -

Bob