xsl-list
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Conditional extraction of data

2004-11-08 06:43:12
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



--+------------------------------------------------------------------
XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
To unsubscribe, go to: http://lists.mulberrytech.com/xsl-list/
or e-mail: <mailto:xsl-list-unsubscribe(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
--+--




<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>