Re: sort

Well, that is exactly how I had understood it the first time.

Unfortunately it seems you did not understand what
I was suggesting. Perhaps I should have detailed more,
but I had only time to focus on the important issue.
The solution I gave would allow the client to input either
'person', 'person/extra' or any other path, up to depth 3,
and have the list sorted according to their selection
(just as you describe).

On the other hand, if there is only a limited number
of ways the clients may want to sort on, you can also
number them (or identify them any other way)
and enumerate them as <xsl:sort> elements :

<xsl:apply-templates>
    <xsl:sort select="person[$sortering=1]" />
    <xsl:sort select="person/extra[$sortering=2]" />
    <xsl:sort select="person/extra/other[$sortering=3]" />
    <xsl:sort select="stuff[$sortering=4]" />
</xsl:apply-templates>

This way the elements will be sorted on 'person' when
$sortering=1, on 'person/extra' when $sortering=2, etc.
Just put the number of the column the user clicked on
in $sortering.
Of course you can use descriptive strings instead of
numbers, but I chose numbers to make more explicit
the fact that the value of $sortering is not interpreted
as a path.

This is less generic than what I first suggested but if
it works for you... I hope it is clearer at least.

Cheers,
--Jonathan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederic Leclercq" <frederic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 2:27 AM
Subject: Re:  sort


> Thanks, but maybe my question was not that clear.
> I display a table and the clients can click the headers to sort the
> table. (html)
>
> But not every <td></td> is at the same level in the xml-string.... so
> some clients would like to sort (at xml level)
> <root><person></person></root>
> and other clients may want to sort on
> <root><person><extra><extra></person></root>
>
> Hope you understand me ;-)
>
> Thx in advance,
> Fred.
>
> Jonathan Perret wrote:
>
> >If the depth of the sorting-element can be bounded to e.g. 3 :
> >First, parse your sort specification (e.g., 'person.superlogin.login')
into
> >several variables - in this case it would give :
> >$sortdepth=3
> >$sortering1='person'
> >$sortering2='superlogin'
> >$sortering3='login'
> >For a simpler sort, e.g. on 'person' it would give :
> >$sortdepth=1
> >$sortering1='person'
> >$sortering2=''
> >$sortering3=''
> >This is easy to do with substring-before() and substring-after(), so I'll
> >leave it as an exercise :-)
> >
> >Then you can use the following :
> >
> > <xsl:apply-templates>
> >   <xsl:sort select="*[name()=$sortering1 and $sortdepth=1]"
> >order="{$direction}"/>
> >   <xsl:sort select="*[name()=$sortering1 and
> >$sortdepth=2]/*[name()=$sortering2]" order="{$direction}"/>
> >   <xsl:sort select="*[name()=$sortering1 and
> >$sortdepth=3]/*[name()=$sortering2]/*[name()=$sortering3]"
> >order="{$direction}"/>
> > </xsl:apply-templates>
> >



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