RE: [xsl] Integrated sort using different elements


When you talk of an element with no monogr/author, do you mean the
monogr/author element is absent, or do you mean the element is present and
its value is empty? Being present but empty would account for the results
you are describing.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Quinn Dombrowski [mailto:qdombrow(_at_)uiuc(_dot_)edu] 
Sent: 19 February 2009 17:16
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [xsl] Integrated sort using different elements

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the tip. A bit earlier, I tried the

<xsl:sort select="
 ( monogr/author, analytic/author, monogr/editor, monogr/title )[1]"/>

and it produced some kind of weird results. First it listed 
the ones with analytic/author but no monogr/author. Then the 
ones with a monogr/title, and no author anywhere. Then it 
alphabetized all the ones with monogr/author. (In my smaller 
test set, there didn't happen to be any editors.)

I'm not sure what's happening there, but when I did:
        <xsl:sort select="concat(monogr[1]/author[1],
analytic[1]/author[1], monogr[1]/editor[1], 
monogr[1]/title[1])"/> ([1]'s because there's sometimes 
multiple editions with multiple authors)

it sorted everything the way I needed it. I'm not sure if the 
data happens to be such that the concat() problem you 
mentioned doesn't come up, but one way or another it works.

Thanks everyone for your help! This has really been a life saver.

~Quinn

G. Ken Holman wrote:

At 2009-02-19 10:13 -0600, Quinn Dombrowski wrote:

I'm using 2.0 (sorry, I should've mentioned that), so I'll try 
Michael's solution and let you know how it goes...


Before you do so, Quinn .....

At 2009-02-19 10:19 -0500, I wrote:

In XSLT 2.0, choose the first item in a sequence of many items, 
priority indicated by the order of your sequence:

<xsl:sort select="
 ( monogr/author, analytic/author, monogr/editor, monogr/title 
)[1]"/>


At 2009-02-19 15:47 +0000, Michael Kay wrote:

Would it work to sort on the concatenation? -

<xsl:sort select="concat(monogr/author, analytic/author, 
monogr/editor, monogr/title"/>


I think the sequence solution is safer than the

concatenation solution

because if more than one field is present, then the initial

characters

of a following field, tacked on to the final characters of

a preceding

field, will but the record out of order.

Consider the following:

<biblStruct id="b1">
  <monogr>
    <author>abc</author>
    ...
  <analytic>
    <author>xyz</author>
  ...
<biblStruct id="b2">
  <monogr>
    <author>abcdef</author>

Using the sequence approach would put "b1" before "b2" in

the result

because "abc" is before "abcdef", while using the concatenation 
approach would put "b2" before "b1" in the result because

"abcdef" is

before "abcxyz".

I hope this illustrates an important issue that was

neglected in your

decision.

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

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