Re: [xsl] Legibility, repetition, nesting

Dear Syd (cc xsl-list),

Thanks for the quick response. As you note, the actual main template does a
lot of things that are common to all types before it gets to the
<xsl:choose>, and if I write completely separate templates for each of the
types, I would need to repeat that shared code verbatim in each of the
type-specific templates. The variables do have to be inside the templates
because they are specific to each item. It isn't just variables, there are
about 30 lines of code common to all items, including variable
declarations, literal result elements (depending on variables), copies of
elements and attributes. and a couple of for-each statements, with the
<xsl:choose> inside the inner for-each.

Best,

David



On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 1:32 PM Bauman, Syd 
s(_dot_)bauman(_at_)northeastern(_dot_)edu <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

> Hi David!
>
> I don’t feel qualified to pontificate on *best* practice, but happy to
> suggest pros and cons of alternatives. But first, let’s make sure I have
> this right—the current basic structure is roughly as follows:
>
>   <xsl:template match="item">
>     <xsl:variable name="pre-choose-var-1" select="''"/>
>     <xsl:variable name="pre-choose-var-2" select="''"/>
>     <xsl:copy>
>       <xsl:sequence select="common-stuff"/>
>       <xsl:choose>
>         <xsl:when test="@type eq '001'"><!-- 001-specific --></xsl:when>
>         <xsl:when test="@type eq '002'"><!-- 002-specific --></xsl:when>
>         <!-- ... -->
>         <xsl:when test="@type eq '133'"><!-- 133-specific --></xsl:when>
>         <xsl:when test="@type eq '134'"><!-- 134-specific --></xsl:when>
>       </xsl:choose>
>     </xsl:copy>
>   </xsl:template>
>
> If so, I wonder if dividing the one huge template up into 134 small ones
> would be more manageable:
>
>   <xsl:template match="item[@type eq '001']">
>     <xsl:variable name="pre-choose-var-1" select="''"/>
>     <xsl:variable name="pre-choose-var-2" select="''"/>
>     <xsl:copy>
>       <xsl:call-template name="do-common-stuff"/>
>       <!-- 001-specific -->
>     </xsl:copy>
>   </xsl:template>
>
> No “main” template at all. If the pre-choose variables do not depend on
> @type, a lot of repetition, though. (I am presuming the variables need to
> be inside the template, which you implied, but did not state, if I read
> right.)
>
> Just a thought. Stay safe, keep coding.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> I write here for advice about Best Practice. The question is at the end;
> because I am constitutionally unable to be concise, the long narrative
> before it is context.
>
> I'm developing an XSLT stylesheet that processes 134 different types of
> items (same generic identifier, distinguished by an attribute value). For
> each item, regardless of type, I create several variables, do an
> <xsl:copy>, and inside that first create some other content that is common
> to all items, regardless of type, and then use <xsl:choose> to handle the
> types differently, according to their idiosyncrasies. I began by
> implementing this as a single template with a long <xsl:choose> deeply
> nested inside it, which has the advantage of avoiding unnecessary
> repetition, since the shared operations are outside the <xsl:choose>. It
> works, but perfectionism is a terrible curse ...
>
> Perhaps I'm being arbitrarily fastidious, but the <xsl:choose> inside the
> deep nesting feels awkward; I wind up with one template that runs to more
> than a thousand lines, where the <xsl:choose> is seven levels deep. This
> made me wonder whether off-loading the type-specific tasks to separate
> templates or functions, which could be called from the appropriate place,
> would keep the main template down to a more manageable size. Specifically,
> I'd like to be able to put the code blocks currently inside of the
> <xsl:when> statements somewhere other than deep inside a single main
> template.
>
> One implementation of this approach that works, but comes with its own
> issues, is using an <xsl:next-match> with auxiliary lower-priority
> templates that match item[@type eq 'x']. This lets me break out the
> type-specific code into separate templates. The reason this is not wholly
> satisfactory is that I have to pass all of the variables into these
> separate templates as parameters, so I wind up repeating the same
> <xsl:param> statements inside each of the secondary templates. That much
> repetition feels suboptimal.
>
> The only approach that occurs to me that might simultaneously eliminate
> repetition and avoid putting all of the processing inside a single
> thousand-line template, most of which is the <xsl:choose> with all of the
> type-specific handling inside <xsl:when> children, is to put the
> type-specific processing into separate files, with an <xsl:when> root, and
> then <xsl:include> them inside the <xsl:choose>. One downside seems to be
> that they will not be valid XSLT (they won’t have the necessary wrapper
> boilerplate and the variables they use won’t be defined inside them), which
> I think I could overcome by using an <oXygen/> "master document", which
> would cause them to be validated in context. That isn't ideal, since it's
> tied to a specific development environment, but since that happens to be my
> usual development environment, the objection is philosophical (= can be
> ignored in the interest of Getting The Job Done), rather than practical.
>
> So: Is there a Best Practice approach to breaking out the type-specific
> treatment of the different types of items that avoids both 1) unnecessary
> repetition and 2) embedding a single thousand-line <xsl:choose>, which
> contains all of the type-specific operations, seven levels deep inside a
> template?
>
>
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