Can I query an XML document as it's created

BillMoo · July 6th, 2012, 11:29 AM

Hello.

When creating an XML during a transformation is it possible to query (XPath) the document as it's being built?

For example I have a template that can create an unknown number of elements with an unknown number of attributes, so is it possible to find out how may elements were created after the template has finished?

Code:

<xsl:template name="root">
    <xsl:call-template name="create-unknown-number-of-elements-template" />
    <xsl:call-template name="count-number-of-elements-created-above" />
</xsl:template>

Or am I wasting my time?

--
Bill

mhkay · July 6th, 2012, 11:50 AM

Typically you'll need to write this as a multi-phase transformation in which the second phase processes the output of the first. Whether the two phases run in series or in parallel is of course entirely up to the optimizer.

BillMoo · July 6th, 2012, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhkay

Typically you'll need to write this as a multi-phase transformation in which the second phase processes the output of the first. Whether the two phases run in series or in parallel is of course entirely up to the optimizer.

Hi Michael,

Once again "Thank you", I normally wouldn't do this but are you able to provide me with an example of this please?

--
Bill

Martin Honnen · July 6th, 2012, 12:06 PM

Assuming XSLT 2.0 you can do

Code:

<xsl:variable name="temp1">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="node()" mode="m1"/>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:template match="/">
 <xsl:value-of select="count($temp1//*)"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="foo" mode="m1">
  ...
</xsl:template>

I used a mode instead of named templates instead of named templates as your first post does but of course if you want you can populate a variable with a named template.

BillMoo · July 7th, 2012, 12:30 PM

Thank you Martin. But for the life of me I couldn't get it to work so I ended up using nested templates.

--
Bill