RE: Conditional extraction of data

Phew!!!  You had me going for a moment there.

Seriously, though.  Thanks very much.  I'll give it a go tonight.  Because I'm 
taking this course and working at the same time I'll have to give B&N (or more 
likely Waterstones in my case) a miss, but I'll follow up the web resources for 
sure.

The books I've consulted have been Schmelzer, XML and web services unleashed, 
and  Ray, Learning XML (1st edn).  The former is our course text.  I'd 
completely missed this (not surprising in the case of the "unleashed" book, as 
I've just looked at the copy in work and it doesn't seem to mention 
xsl:copy-of).  My copy of Learning xml is at home, so I'll have to check it 
tonight.

I'll try to do the courteous thing and let you know how I get on.  If I don't, 
feel free to think less of me!

Thanks again


Peter

 -----Original Message-----
From:   M. David Peterson [mailto:m(_dot_)david(_at_)mdptws(_dot_)com] 
Sent:   08 November 2004 13:46
To:     xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject:        Re: [xsl] Conditional extraction of data

ooops!

This portion:

<xsl:value-of select="foo"/> will output: "this is the value of foo"

<xsl:value-of select="foo"/> will output a copy of all the text elements 
as well as the elements and there values that are descendants of foo. o

should have read...

<xsl:value-of select="foo"/> will output: "this is the value of foo"

<xsl:copy-of select="foo"/> will output a copy of all the text elements 
as well as the elements and there values that are descendants of foo.

Sorry for the confusion!

<M:D/>



M. David Peterson wrote:

Peter,

I think there are a lot of people on this list that will commend you 
for your desire to learn by your own efforts and merits before asking 
for the answer.  Let me be the first...  nice job!

Now... moving forward to help you with solving your dillemma.  The 
first thing you want to focus on is the difference between what 
xsl:value-of will output and what xsl:copy-of will output.  Think of 
the difference like this...  value-of will output the string value of 
the current element in context where as copy-of will make a deep copy 
of the element and all of its descendants.  So, in  other words... 
given the following XML...

<foo>
   this is the value of foo
   <bar>this is the value of bar.<p>this is the value of a paragraph 
that is the child of bar</p></bar>
</foo>

<xsl:value-of select="foo"/> will output: "this is the value of foo"

<xsl:value-of select="foo"/> will output a copy of all the text 
elements as well as the elements and there values that are descendants 
of foo. or:

<foo>
   this is the value of foo
   <bar>this is the value of bar.<p>this is the value of a paragraph 
that is the child of bar</p></bar>
</foo>

If you were to use the xsl:copy element you could get selective of 
which elements or attributes to include in your copy.  So, if I were 
you, I would do one of two things... rush out to your local Barnes & 
Noble or Borders (or equivalent) and pick up a copy of Dr. Michael 
Kays XSLT Developers Reference OR go to the W3C and take a look at the 
XSLT 1.0 specification, and focus specifically on the above 
elements... learn all about each of them... read the sections over and 
over and over again until you finally get it... sometimes this is what 
it takes.

If after all this you still are having troubles come back to the list 
and showcase the fact that you have done all that you can and you 
still are having troubles and I know more than half the people on this 
list will be more than happy to help.

Best of luck to you!

<M:D/>

Bradley, Peter wrote:

It pays to be honest, so I'll be up-front about this.  The question 
arises from an assignment on a course I'm doing.

However, I don't want to cheat, so I'll try to form the question in 
the most general way that I can:

The purpose of the exercise is to convert some xml to html.  I have a 
repeating element under the root - let's call it anElement.  
Initially, the requirement was to output all its contents, 
unchanged.  So I could do this:

<xsl:for-each select="anElement">
    <xsl:value-of select="." />
</xsl:for-each>

The anElement element has mixed content and would be described in a 
DTD as follows:

<!ELEMENT anElement (#PCDATA | tag1 | tag2 | tag3 | tag4)* >

All the child tags contain #PCDATA only.

The new requirement is to print all the content as before, but to 
print the contents of tag2 (say) in italics - i.e. surround its 
contents with <i></i> html tags.

I've sweated over this all weekend and can't work out how to solve 
it.  If I treat each tag individually in a for-each or an 
apply-templates/template combination (if that makes sense), I can't 
see how to output the #PCDATA in anElement.

Any help would be appreciated - especially a pointer to a resource 
that will let me work it out for myself.  I've tried the obvious 
places like w3c schools.

Thank for your attention


Peter



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