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Re: Re: Selecting a random node from source-tree

2002-09-26 10:15:20

--- "Martin Lormes" <martin dot lormes at gmx dot net> wrote:


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dimitre Novatchev" dnovatchev at yahoo dot com
To: <xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 5:11 PM
Subject: [xsl] Re: Selecting a random node from source-tree


I was thinking of an XPath expression like this:

document('funnies.xml')/funnies/quote[random()]

Can I avoid using extension elements?

Yes, use the "randNext" template from FXSL.

More information is contained in the article:

"Casting the Dice with FXSL: Random Number Generation Functions in
XSLT"

http://fxsl.sourceforge.net
/articles/Random/Casting%20the%20Dice%20with%20FXSL-htm.htm

Hope this helped.


Thanks, Dimitre. Awsome article!

Unfortunately I always get the same random number (which makes
perfect
sense, since I can't dynamically generate a starting number :-( )

So I must add this as a condition to my original question: the
stylesheet is
static. No way of changing that.


Thanks for your help.
Martin Lormes


That's easy -- have the minutes or seconds part of the current time (or
whatever else you find appropriate) passed as a parameter to the
stylesheet and use that as the seed (or use a subsequence of the
original sequence, starting with the element having index equal to this
parameter.



=====
Cheers,

Dimitre Novatchev.
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL

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