RE: expression syntax

Alan
In my suggested solution I'd assumed that date was an attribute of
performance.  That is, you xml would look like this:

        <performance date="2004-11-15">...</performance>

Hence I suggested using @date rather than date in the translate expression.

However, re-reading your original message I see that you had
performance[date = $today] which implies that your xml looks like this:

        <performance><date>2004-11-15</date></performance>

Given that that is how your xml actually looks then this is what I should
have written:

        <xsl:for-each select='performance[translate(date,"-","") &gt;=
$iToday]'/>

David's solution suggested using the number function around the translate
function to cast the string as a date.  For IE6 I found that this wasn't
necessary, but I don't know whether XPath is supposed to automatically cast
a string as a number when doing numeric comparisons, or whether this is an
example of Microsoft's "embrace and extend" policy towards standards.  Does
anyone know the rules here?

Regards
George

George James Software
Caché Tools, Training, Technology
www.georgejames.com
+44-1932-252568

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Divorty [mailto:alan(_dot_)divorty(_at_)btinternet(_dot_)com]
Sent: 14 November 2004 21:16
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [xsl] expression syntax

Thanks guys (incl.George James), but it just keeps failing
when I try to include the translate in the Select expression.

It was fine translating the input parameter into a new
variable (as suggested by George) and now I've cheated by
re-speccing the xml file to have dates without dashes, so it
now works as required.

Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: "M. David Peterson" <m(_dot_)david(_at_)mdptws(_dot_)com>
To: <xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: [xsl] expression syntax

Hey Alan,

The two things to consider when using a XSLT 1.0 processor

(MSXML3 or

MSXML4 -- both are possibilities as far as what version of

MSXML is on

your system  -- are XSLT 1.0 processors):

- There is no date comparison function.
- In 1.0 there is type support for the 4 XPath data types - string,
number, boolean, node-set.

With this in mind your element date value of 2004-11-14 is

viewed as a

string, not a number.  So using &lt; = or > will return no possible
matches for anything that is not a number.  In your case, given the
order of your date entities you are in luck as you can

simply use the

translate() function to convert the '-' (dash) to '' (empty

string or

empty space, however you want to term it.  translate(date, '-', '')
will accomplish this task.  This will then allow a simple type
conversion from a string to a number by using the number

funtion.  The

simplest way to do this is to wrap the previous translate function
inside the number function as so:  number(translate(date, '-', ''))

To get the results you are looking for my suggestion would

be to take

the above conversion functions and use them within
xsl:apply-templates, using the match attribute of a xsl:template
element to match the 'date' element and make a copy of that

particular

nodes contents.  So something like this:

<xsl:param name="date" select="'20041114'"/>
<!-- NOTE: by using param instead of variable you allow

yourself the

ability to pass the value in from outside the template -->

<xsl:template match="/">
    <dates>
        <xsl:apply-templates
select="performance/date[number(translate(., '-', ''))

&gt;= $today]"/>

    </dates>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="date">
    <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>

Should be much more effective for you in gaining access to

the nodes

that match your number based comparison.  NOTE: Something

to keep in

mind...  The translate function above will only make a copy of the
string contained within the date element and use that for

comparison.

The actual value will retain its original '-' delimited string
version. The matching template will make a copy of each matching
element from the specified criteria (complete copy of the

element, its

attributes (if any), and its value).  So don't be surprised

to see the

dashes still in place when looking at your output.

Hope this helps!

<M:D/>

Alan Divorty wrote:

I am trying to compare two dates, one in the xml data against an
external parameter holding today's date.

The format of each is yyyy-mm-dd

<xsl:for-each select="performance[date = $today]">

successfully processes records with today's date.

However, I want to
select

all records equal to or later than today, but

<xsl:for-each select="performance[date &gt;= $today]">  does not
select

any

records.

Is my syntax wrong?

I'm using IE6 to process the files.

Thanks,
Alan


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