Select questions

Michael Kay

You can do this in XPath 2 as

//node[every $n in //node[@id=1] satisfies 
        (@timebeg ge $n/@timebeg and @timebeg le $n/@timeend)]

You can't do general joins in XPath 1 (it's not relationally complete). The nearest you can get is

<xsl:for-each select="//node">
  <xsl:variable name="n" select="."/>
  <xsl:copy-of select="$n[not(//node[@id=1][@timebeg &lt;= $n/@timebeg or 
                                            @timeget &gt;= $n/@timeend)]"/>
</xsl:for-each>

Michael Kay

<xsl:template match="data">
<a href="{(link[matches(.,'^http://')],link[matches(.,'^ftp://')])[1]}">
<xsl:value-of select="title"/>
</a>
</xsl:template>

Ednote. Note the use of braces inside the AVT; and the use of the matches function in the predicate.

David Carlisle

Try

<xsl:template match="volume/book[chapter/@title=('monkeys','buffalo')]">

You just need

<xsl:variable name="x" 
 select="distinct-values(/A/B/C/@atc)"/>

Andrew Welsh

beware though that that will get you burned again when you start using XSLT2 scented water.

xsl:value-of returns a text node with string value the string value of the expression. This is subtly or not so subtly different from a string. It doesn't make so much difference in XSLT1 as the only way to carry strings around is to put them in text nodes, but in xpath2 you can have sequences of strings and sequences of text nodes (and sequences that contain both strings and text nodes) the rules for the two cases (and in particular whether spaces are automatically inserted between adjacent items) are different on the two cases.

Yes, but I think the 2.0 way makes more sense.

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing (and to help cement my knowledge), consider:

<root>
  <node>foo</node>
  <node>bar</node>
</root>

In 1.0:

<xsl:template match="root">
  <xsl:value-of select="node"/>
</xsl:template>

Returns:

'foo'

Because in XSLT 1.0 'first item semantics' apply when a value-of is performed on a sequence.

In 2.0 the same template would return:

'foo bar'

That is, all items in the sequence with a single space as a seperator. In order to remove/control the space, we can use the @separator on value-of:

<xsl:value-of select="node" separator=""/>

Which would produce:

'foobar'

For me, that's much more intuitive than just picking the first one. Another plus for 2.0 :)

Of course, if there is another sequence related area to get burned on please post an example - it's good to know the gotchas up front.

Michael Kay

Another solution to add to the list you've been given: In XSLT 2.0 you can do

<td bgcolor="{if (position() mod 2) then 'black' else 'white'}">
  ...
</td>

Michael Kay

I'm assuming that <para> represents <para>....</para>, i.e. a complete element.

If you know that the nodes are siblings, and you are positioned on their parent, then you can do

(title[1] , *[. >> title[1] and . << title[2]] , title[2])

If they aren't siblings and you are positioned on the root, then you can do

for $T1 in (//title)[1], $T2 in (//title)[2]
return ($T1, //*[. >> $T1 and . << $T2], $T2)

George Cristian Bina

In XSLT 2.0 you can write

value="{(un,'Please enter your username')[1]}"

which selects the first from the set, which is what you want.

Andrew Welch

In 2.0 you can use:

string-join(//*[not(*)]/@name, ', ')

David Carlisle

David C offers

<x xmlns:target="t">

      <target:row Category='A-B-C-D'/>
      <target:row Category='A-B'/>
      <target:row Category='A-C-D'/>
      <target:row Category='C'/>
      <target:row Category='B-C-D'/>
      <target:row Category='A-t'/>
</x>

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"; xmlns:target="t" >

<xsl:output indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="x">
 <xsl:for-each select="distinct-values(target:row/tokenize(@Category,'-'))">
  <option><xsl:value-of select="."/></option>
 </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

$ saxon8 spl.xml spl.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<option xmlns:target="t">A</option>
<option xmlns:target="t">B</option>
<option xmlns:target="t">C</option>
<option xmlns:target="t">D</option>
<option xmlns:target="t">t</option>

Florent Georges offers

or (I prefer this one):

   distinct-values(target:row/tokenize(@Category, '-'))