Converting delimited text to separate XML Elements

tcblack · March 17th, 2010, 04:03 PM

I've purchased Michael Kay's XSLT 2.0 and XPATH 2.0 (4th ed.) as a raw beginning with XSLT, and I'm trying to learn as I go along. I've done ok till now.

Yes I'm using XSLT 2.0

I'm actually trying to create an export filter for OpenOffice.org to create a custom XML document for another bit of software I use regularly. And I'm nearly there! But now I've hit a snag as I'm teaching myself through this process.

I am attempting to transfer a semicolon delimited element in one XML file to a new one.
Essentially I'm trying to go from:
Document A's meta data which contains:

Code:

<meta:keyword>Anna; Simeon; Character; Temple</meta:keyword>

into Document B which has the form:

Code:

<topics>
    <topic></topic>
</topics>

The result actually needs to look like

Code:

<topics>
    <topic>Anna</topic>
    <topic>Simeon</topic>
    <topic>Character</topic>
    <topic>Temple</topic>
</topics>

I'm staring at the tokenize function (pp 894-ff) and thinking that it must be the answer, but I'm just plain lost. I've also tried to follow this thread:
XML element with delimited values and XSLT, but once again I'm stuck. Probably because I'm such a noob at this.

Can anyone graciously assist my learning at this point?

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

samjudson · March 17th, 2010, 06:30 PM

Assuming all your namespaces etc are sorted out then the following should work:

Code:

<xsl:template match="meta:keyword">
  <topics>
    <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(., ';')">
      <topic><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/></topic>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </topics>
</xsl:template>

mhkay · March 17th, 2010, 07:12 PM

And another approach is

Code:

<xsl:template match="meta:keyword">
  <topics>
    <xsl:analyze-string select="." regex=";\s+">
      <xsl:matching-substring>
        <topic><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/></topic>
      </xsl:matching-substring>
    </xsl:analyze-string>
  </topics>
</xsl:template>

As you see, tokenize() is probably easier here, but xsl:analyze-string can be useful when things get more complicated, for example when you need to retain the delimiters.

tcblack · March 18th, 2010, 11:39 AM

Thank you both for answering.

As Sam suggested, I'm having an issue with namespaces.

I'm stuck on getting the stylesheet to look at the right document for this particular transform.

Normally if I was using xsl:value-of I could pull the whole path to the document as:

Code:

<xsl:value-of select="/office:document/office:meta/meta:keyword />

This is what I do throughout the transformation sheet.

I'm working against about four XML documents in order to pull the information I need into the new one.
I tried to modify the suggested code with that full path, but alas it fails.

Code:

<xsl:template match="/office:document/office:meta/meta:keyword">

Martin Honnen · March 18th, 2010, 12:14 PM

We need to see more context to tell what is wrong such as the input XML document(s) and the other code of the stylesheet that pulls in the document(s) for processing and applies templates. An XSLT stylesheet can have one primary input document, any other document(s) you need to pull in using the "document" function (XSLT 1.0 and 2.0) or the "doc" function (XSLT/XPath 2.0). And then you will have use apply-templates to select nodes for further processing, if you want your template to be applied.

tcblack · March 18th, 2010, 06:02 PM

Martin,
Thank you... however I was able to figure it out!
I really appreciate you all for helping me out.