It seems the second appl-template tag in the second template rule was the
trick. Thanks so much. BTW, you were right about this being the beginning
of what I needed - but I couldn't move on untill I got this piece done. Now
I need to get the formatting the way I want and then figure out how to get
the game name as well. The game id info is all collected in the one file in
the attribute, so that's easy. For the game name I'll have to go to a
{gameid}.xml file and find it in there. Iterating through all those may be
a bit more that a simple xsl can handle, but i'm happy to be moving on this
again.
Thanks,
Todd Alexander
heeznow(_at_)msn(_dot_)com
From: "M. David Peterson" <m(_dot_)david(_at_)mdptws(_dot_)com>
Reply-To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [xsl] Can't get output from xml -> text transformation
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 12:25:06 -0600
Hi Todd,
Understanding what nodes are being processed and matched to a template will
help in your understanding of whats happening. <xsl:apply-templates /> is
the same thing as <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/> which will select all
the children of the current context (root) and seek out a template to match
them to (in your case there are no matching templates to the children of
context - one node by the name of "allGamesDownloadable" - and as such the
"value" of each child node is simply sent to the output "as is" until there
are no more children left to process. The "blank" lines you are seeing are
most likely the newline characters that exist as child "text" nodes of
"allGamesDownloadable" in your source XML.
It seems that what you are expecting to happen is for every node (every
child of a child of a child etc...) to be processed according to document
order and when there is not matching template it will simply move to the
next child or grandchild until it finds a match. While this is in no way
an uncommon mistake - in fact its a VERY common mistake - it is
fundamentally flawed from an XSLT template matching perspective and as such
will not provide you the results you are looking for. If you try to think
of it from the perspective that to gain access to the children of the
current context node you must begin the recursive nature of apply-templates
when the desired children are in context you will find yourself catching
your errors quite easily... for example, the following will select the
children of the root node, find the best matching template, process it
accordingly, and then begin the recursive process on the children of the
current context node ("allGamesDownloadable") by once again calling
apply-templates at a time when the children are in context. Because we are
using "*" for our match value the same template will match the children
currently being processed which means any children of these children will
be recursively processed and matched to the same template and this process
will continue until every node in the source document has gone through "the
ringer" so to speak...
so this....
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>
<xsl:output method="text" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:text>
GAMEID,GAMENAME
</xsl:text>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:value-of select="@gameId"/>,
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
Will output the value of @gameId for every node that is processed by this
template that has an attribute gameId.
While this particular case will not give you the CSV output you are in
desire of this should give you just enough information to help move you in
the right direction...
Best of luck to you!
<M:D/>