Wendell,
Thanks for the insight. Perhaps I need to explain myself a little more. I
am taking an InDesign inx file and trying to build some structure (ie an
XML document) that I can then use later. I am working with an army of
editors who will not style first or last name in InDesign. They will
however style every name as author, so my inx file looks like this:
<AUTHOR>Al Stick, Tom She, Dick Burg, and Harry Ward</AUTHOR>
and I want to add <fname> and <lname> elements to the mix.
What is the best way to do this? I wrote the below function but realize
that this is difficult at best.
Thanks again,
troy
Wendell Piez <wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
04/17/2006 03:02 PM
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Re: [xsl] creating tags around a string
Troy,
Ordinarily, we don't create "tags" in XSLT. Instead, we use the
language's built-in capability to build a structure of nodes that
represents ("is") an XML document, and then rely on a downstream
component after the transformation (a "serializer") to write
tags-and-text -- XML syntax -- that represents ("is") the desired result.
This can be confusing since the way we represent these structures
(which we call "trees") in a stylesheet is the same as we do in a
document -- using tags and text.
This means that instead of what you have (reformatted for clarity):
<xsl:text><fname></xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:text></fname></xsl:text>
one could simply write
<fname>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</fname>
which would instruct the processor to attach a branch to the tree like
this:
+ [element 'fname'
+ [value of '.'] ]
which is to say an element named 'fname', containing a bit of text
(the value of "."). No tags have to be written until the tree to
which this branch is attached is built by the transformation, at
which point we could simply hand it to the serializer, which for this
bit would write "<fname>Bob</fname>" (if our value had been "Bob").
Is there any reason you can't do this?
In contrast, what you have would do this:
+ [text '<fname>']
+ [value of '.']
+ [text '</fname>']
which is both more work -- think about adding attributes, keeping the
nesting right, etc. -- and hard to write, debug and maintain.
If you could build trees instead of write tags-and-text, it would
make the rest of what you need to do (handling variant input) much
easier, along with everything else.
For everyday purposes, using XSLT to write explicit tags is
considered a no-no, since there's almost never a good reason to do
it. And no wonder: the other way is how the language is designed to work.
Cheers,
Wendell
At 05:17 PM 4/17/2006, you wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to create some tags around a string of names and was
wondering
what is the best way to do this. I have come up with the below xslt, but
it will only work limited instances. Any other ideas would be grand. For
example, if I have any middle names or more than a first/last name, the
xslt breaks.
Thanks!
-troy
=====================================================
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
xmlns:foo="http://whatever";>
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:function name="foo:mesplit">
<xsl:param name="inString"/>
<xsl:param name="delimiter"/>
<xsl:variable name="tokenizedSample" select="
tokenize($inString,$delimiter)"/>
<xsl:for-each select="$tokenizedSample">
<xsl:variable name="thisstick">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="contains(.,',')">
<xsl:value-of select="
foo:mesplit($thisstick,',')"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="contains(., ' ')">
<xsl:value-of
select="foo:mesplit(
normalize-space($thisstick),' ')"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:if test=".">
<xsl:if test="
index-of($tokenizedSample, .) = 1">
<xsl:text> </
xsl:text>
<xsl:text>
<fname></xsl:text>
<
xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:text>
</fname></xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="
index-of($tokenizedSample, .) = 2">
<xsl:text>
<lname></xsl:text>
<
xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:text>
</lname></xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:function>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:value-of select="foo:mesplit('Al Stick, Tom She,
Dick
Burg and Harry Ward', 'and')"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
======================
desired output:
<fname>Al</fname><lname>Stick</lname>
<fname>Tom</fname><lname>She</lname>
<fname>Dick</fname><lname>Burg</lname>
<fname>Harry</fname><lname>Ward</lname>
======================================================================
Wendell Piez
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
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