Parse XML by pattern matching

AayushN · May 5th, 2016, 02:07 AM

Hi,
I have an XML file that contains recurring instances of tags like this:
<ABC-question-1>text</ABC-question-1>
<ABC-some-question></ABC-some-question>

tags like the above have similar ABC keyword for all occurrences and these tags donot necessarily apppear together in a particular block in the XML file.

I want to parse these tags with an xslt so as to display all these tags with ABC pattern group together in the output file.

Thnaks in advance.

samjudson · May 5th, 2016, 03:00 AM

You'll want to use something like "*[starts-with(name(),'ABC')]" to get all the nodes that start with ABC. Other than that its not clear what you want your output to look like.

AayushN · May 5th, 2016, 07:46 AM

Hello samjudson, thanks you for the reply. The output I want is a table to display the tag name in column 1 and tag value in column 2.

Sample XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<name>AayushN</name>
<email>[email protected]</email>
<ABC-question-1>my answer</ABC-question-1>
<ABC-question-2>my answer 2</ABC-question-2>
<dob>00000000</dob>
<ABC-question-3>my answer 3</ABC-question-3>
<alias-name>noName</alias-name>

Output something like:
*****table*********
Column 1 | Column 2
ABC-question-1 | my answer
ABC-question-2 | my answer 2
ABC-question-3 | my answer 3

Output must only contain the ABC prefix tags and it's values only.

Martin Honnen · May 5th, 2016, 08:18 AM

Once you know you want to process the elements with the path that Sam has shown you all you need to do is set up the table and process the elements:

Code:

<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
     <body>
        <table>
           <thead>
               <tr>
                 <th>Column 1</th>
                 <th>Column 2</th>
               </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
               <xsl:apply-templates select="//*[starts-with(local-name(), 'ABC')]"/>
             </tbody>
         </table>
      </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*">
  <tr>
    <td><xsl:value-of select="local-name()"/></td>
    <td><xsl:value-of select="."/></td>
  </tr>
</xsl:template>