Re: generic sort based on attribute names

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:37:24 -0000, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This is quite tricky in XSLT 1.0 as the sort key has to be expressed as an
> XPath expression, it can't be computed using XSLT code. In 2.0 (a) XPath
> expressions are more powerful, and (b) you can do an XSLT computation inside
> the xsl:sort.
> 
> Here's a solution using the latter approach:
> 
> <xsl:for-each select="e">
>  <xsl:sort>
>    <xsl:for-each select="@*">
>      <xsl:sort select="name()"/>
>      <xsl:value-of select='name(), "=""", ., """ "' separator=""/>
>    </xsl:for-each>
>  </xsl:sort>
>  <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
> </xsl:for-each>
> 
> Not tested; and note (a) this doesn't handle namespaces, and (b) it doesn't
> attempt to change the order of attributes in the output, since that's not
> under XSLT's control anyway.
> 
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/

Saxon 8.2 produces an error message that:

"A sequence of more than one item is not allowed as the @sort-key
attribute of xsl:sort".

Besides this problem, does xsl:sort have a "sort-key" attribute? I
don't see it specified either in the latest WG draft or in the book.


Cheers,
Dimitre.



> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chaitanya Desai [mailto:cdesai@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: 23 January 2005 03:23
> > To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject:  generic sort based on attribute names
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> > I am trying to write a generic sort that uses the 'concatenated
> > name-value pairs of all attributes sorted' as the key to sort
> > elements
> > at a particular level.
> > Example
> > Suppose
> > <root>
> >  <e b="bb" y="yy"/>
> >  <e z="zz" a="aa"/>
> > </root>
> > is the XML I want to sort.
> > The result of the sort should be
> > <root>
> >   <e a="aa" z="zz" />
> >   <e b="bb" y="yy" />
> > </root>
> > Thus the attributes within an element are sorted and then the
> > key used
> > for sorting elements would be:
> > 'az' and 'by' respectively (thus 'az' < 'by').
> > I am able to sort attributes within an element.
> > But I am having trouble setting the key to sort for elements.
> > Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> > Thanks
> > Chaitanya