I know I know, it's not possible.
You're right. Well, almost.
The select="*[name()=$param]" trick only works for single level "child
element" selections. You can try stretching it to other cases, but it's
going to get combinatorially difficult.
I would go with one of the other possible approaches, which are:
(a) generate the XPath expression dynamically, using xx:evaluate() if
your processor offers this extension
(b) generate (or modify) the stylesheet dynamically before you run it.
Michael Kay
Well I've got this line
working so far,
so I'm halfway through the "this is impossible in XSL"
process so far.
First some params, then some XSL.
<xsl:param name="sort_select_lvl_1">author</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_select_lvl_2">/</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_select_lvl_3">last_name</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_order">ascending</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_data_type">text</xsl:param>
<xsl:apply-templates select="document">
<xsl:sort select="*[name()=$sort_select_lvl_1]"
data-type="{$sort_data_type}" order="{$sort_order}" />
</xsl:apply-templates>
Now here's what I want. Sometimes I want to sort by uid,
accesses, which
works fine. Other times I want to sort by author/last_name.
Now I can do
this by changing the sort line to this...
<xsl:sort
select="*[name()=$sort_select_lvl_1]\*[name()=$sort_select_lvl_2]"
data-type="{$sort_data_type}" order="{$sort_order}" />
But then it doesn't work for uid or accesses anymore because
the "\" at the
end of the string. If I remove the "\" i get a number
expected error. So
I've come up with half a way around it. I figure I will have lots of
variables at the top, lvl_1 through 4 so that I can fill them
all with parts
of an xpath statement and then join them togather. So I try it and
unfortunately xpath's concat does not let the sort select
evaluate the xpath
statement. In other words
xsl:sort select="concat('author','/','last_name')" />
is not the same as
<xsl:sort select="author/last_name" />
So how do I string togather the *[name()=$sort_select_lvl_1],
one directly
after the other? I set the defaults in the xslt above to reflect a
reference to "author/last_name".
Glimpse of XML
<catalog>
<document>
<uid>2301</uid>
<url>http://www.who.com/document.htm</url>
<subject>General Stuff</subject>
<abstract>This is an abstractabstract>
<accesses>1</accesses>
<age>4</age>
<last_accessed date="20011229">12/29/2001</last_accessed>
<author>
<first_name>Peon</first_name>
<last_name>lover</last_name>
<serial>9A1551645</serial>
</author>
<owner>
<first_name>Jolly</first_name>
<last_name>Goose</last_name>
<serial>123456</serial>
</owner>
<manager>
<first_name>Someone</first_name>
<last_name>Special</last_name>
<serial>123456</serial>
</manager>
<supervisor>
<first_name>Someone</first_name>
<last_name>Important</last_name>
<serial>123456</serial>
</supervisor>
</document>
...
</catalog>
Thanks in advance!
Aaron
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