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Re: [xsl] An XPath expression that avoids writing special case code?

2021-06-18 02:27:58
On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 7:36 PM Roger L Costello costello(_at_)mitre(_dot_)org <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:


My XML document contains a bunch of <Row> elements, like so:

<Document>
    ...
    <Row>
        <Cell>
            <Data>airport</Data>
        </Cell>
        <Cell>
            <Data>airports</Data>
        </Cell>
    </Row>
    ...
</Document>

I want to fetch the Row whose Cell[1]/Data is 'airport' and whose
Cell[2]/Data is 'airports'. So I created this XPath expression:

/Document/Row[Cell[1]/Data eq 'airport'][Cell[2]/Data eq 'airports']

I do this kind of fetching operation often, so I created a function to
fetch the desired Row:

<xsl:function name="f:getRow">
    <xsl:param name="element"/>
    <xsl:param name="parent"/>
    <xsl:sequence select="$document/Row[Cell[1]/Data eq
$element][Cell[2]/Data eq $parent]" />
</xsl:function>

I call the function this way:

<xsl:sequence select="f:getRow('airport', 'airports')" />

Sometimes there is an element that doesn't have a parent. That is,
sometimes I'd like to fetch a Row in which Cell[2] is empty, like this:

    <Row>
        <Cell>
            <Data>aviation</Data>
        </Cell>
        <Cell/>
    </Row>

Then this call to f:getRow fails:

<xsl:sequence select="f:getRow('aviation', '')" />        <!-- Those are
two apostrophes within the parentheses -->

Clearly I need to modify f:getRow. I could add special case code to test
$parent to see if it is empty (the '' string) and do one thing, and if it's
not empty do another thing. But I wonder if there is a more elegant
solution that doesn't involve special case code? Is there a way to modify
the XPath expression in f:getRow such that it fetches the correct Row
regardless of whether $parent is empty or not?


Testing with XSLT 2.0. Below is an example, for the solution you may be
looking for,

XML input document,

<Document>
    <Row>
       <Cell>
          <Data>airport</Data>
       </Cell>
       <Cell>
          <Data>airports</Data>
       </Cell>
    </Row>
    <Row>
       <Cell>
          <Data>airport</Data>
       </Cell>
       <Cell>
          <Data>ABC</Data>
       </Cell>
    </Row>
    <Row>
      <Cell>
         <Data>aviation</Data>
      </Cell>
      <Cell/>
    </Row>
</Document>

XSLT stylesheet,

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
                         xmlns:f="http://test_fn";
                         exclude-result-prefixes="f"
                         version="2.0">

   <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

   <xsl:variable name="document" select="/Document"/>

   <xsl:template match="/">
      <result>
         <xsl:copy-of select="f:getRow('airport', 'airports')"/>
         <xsl:copy-of select="f:getRow('aviation', '')"/>
      </result>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:function name="f:getRow">
     <xsl:param name="element"/>
     <xsl:param name="parent"/>
     <xsl:sequence select="$document/Row[Cell[1]/Data eq
$element][Cell[2]/string(Data) eq $parent]" />
   </xsl:function>

</xsl:stylesheet>

The output of above XSLT transformation is following,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
   <Row>
       <Cell>
          <Data>airport</Data>
       </Cell>
       <Cell>
          <Data>airports</Data>
       </Cell>
    </Row>
   <Row>
      <Cell>
         <Data>aviation</Data>
      </Cell>
      <Cell/>
    </Row>
</result>


-- 
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi
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