I am new to XSLT Please help



The group priority level

lowest(Public-1) TO Highest (PRIVATE-3)

Public-1 Public-2 Public-3 CONFID-1 CONFID-2 CONFID-3 PRIVATE-1 PRIVATE-2 PRIVATE-3

For example a user LDAP query gives a file

<result>
<DN>CN=Test User ID Priv-2,CN=Users,DC=Lab,DC=acme,DC=com</DN>
<attribute-value name="memberOf">CN=CONFID-2,OU=Groups,DC=Lab,DC=acme,DC=com</attribute-value>
<attribute-value name="memberOf">CN=PRIVATE-2,OU=Groups,DC=Lab,DC=acme,DC=com</attribute-value>
<attribute-value name="memberOf">CN=Public-3,OU=Groups,DC=Lab,DC=acme,DC=com</attribute-value>
</result>

The xslt should select the highest priority level available for the user and output it

In the file above the user has membership in groups

CONFID-2, PRIVATE-2, Public-3


the xslt should give the output just

CN=PRIVATE-2,OU=Groups,DC=Lab,DC=acme,DC=com

You haven't said whether you're using XSLT 2.0 (which makes this kind of problem much easier), and you haven't said which part of the problem you are stuck on - is it parsing the syntax of the attribute-value, or is it doing the sorting? So short of giving you a complete working stylesheet, it's not clear where I should start in giving advice.

My advice would be

(a) Make sure you are using XSLT 2.0

(b) Start by parsing the attribute value (such as <attribute-value name="memberOf">CN=CONFID-2,OU=Groups,DC=Lab,DC=acme,DC=com</attribute-value>) into an XML structure - you can do this using xsl:analyze-string

(c) Write a function that translates the values Public-1, Public-2 etc into a numeric scale

(d) Sort on the result of this function

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

Thank You Mr. Kay for the quick reply. I am really thrilled to get a response from you. I have your book right here with me. I am following it. This for an implementation in DataPower. So I cannot use 2.0. I am very new to XSLT and a snippet of code if possible will be really helpful. I am stuck at the logic of how to go about the sorting part and select the highest priority group. Thank you in advance

Well, if the structure of the attribute values is as regular as in your example, then you can extract the CN values using simple substring-before() and substring-after() calls, so that part is quite possible in XSLT 1.0. Doing a sort on a computed sort key is a bit more tricky. The usual solution is to use two passes - first create a temporary tree on which the computed sort key is present as an explicit attribute; then do the sort on this tree. If you want to do this in a single transformation, it needs the xx:node-set() extension. Alternatively there's a David Carlisle style hack - if you remove the first five characters of the CN value you get C-1, C-2, C-3, D-1, D-2, D-3, TE-1, TE-2, TE-3, which just happens to sort in the desired order. I'm afraid this kind of hackery tends to crop up when you're stuck with using XSLT 1.0.

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

Thank You Mr. Kay. The issue is resolved according to your suggestions.