I know I know, it's not possible. 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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