Re: would like to simplify my XSLT

Thanks for the response--comments below:

--- Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Glen Mazza wrote:
> > --- Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >   
> > Newbie question here--but why do you match on "* |
> > text()" instead of just matching on "/"?  (I saw
> the
> > physical answer--by matching on the latter I got a
> lot
> > of strange white space--but I'm not sure why.)
> >   
> 
> Well, depending on your processor and the way it
> treats whitespace, you 
> indeed see a bunch of whitespace nodes. But you
> should also see the 
> names of 'Chris' and 'John' as text between the
> output nodes, because 
> they fall into the default template. This means: any
> input that does not 
> have a corresponding match, but does have an
> "apply-templates", will be 
> stripped off of all nodes and only the text is
> output.
> 
> This is most visual when you make a stylesheet with
> nothing in it (only 
> opening and closing tag xsl:stylesheet). This will
> output all bare text 
> of your input, because the implicit call is
> apply-templates to your 
> document root (i.e., as if you strip all tags and
> attributes+values).
> 
> If you were to just have the "/" match, you only
> match the root node, 
> and not the text() nodes that you (may) want to get
> rid of. I call this 
> kind of template a throw-away template. Adding
> "xsl:apply-templates" 
> makes sure that any children are processed (if you
> remove it, you will 
> not see any output).
> 
> However, if there is nothing more you want to do
> with the other 
> children, you can replace it like this, which is
> simpler:
> 
> <xsl:template match="text" />
> 
> because the non-text nodes by themselves will not
> output anything with 
> the aforementioned default template, only the text
> does.
> 

Thanks for the explanation.  I have more to practice
with this.

> >
> >   
> >>   
> >> <person name="Chris" />
> >
> > That's correct, but this is not exactly what I
> needed.
> >  I wanted names of people who didn't have *any*
> > documents in the document list--Chris shouldn't
> appear
> > because he had one of his two documents there.
> >
> > By removing the "not" in your XPATH above, that
> gave
> > me people who have at least one document in the
> > document list, useful but still not what I was
> looking
> > for.
> >
> > I'll check the other responses to see if they will
> > help.
> >   
> 
> I beg to disagree. I quote from your original
> message:
> 
> "For example, Chris above has no
> documents in the <documents> list (relid=4 and 7
> aren't there), so he would get listed, but John
> above
> wouldn't, because his "2" is in the list."
> 
> Which, imho, says "chris has [4, 7], documents has
> [1,2], so show 
> chris". Which is illustrated by your own sentence
> "so he would get 
> listed", where "he" presumably refers to "Chris" ;)
> 

Sorry for the confusion here--my example I was working
with was different from the example I had in the
email.  "Chris" indeed *should* have appeared with the
example I had given.  Error on my part.

> My solution does exactly the same as the other
> solutions (i.e., it shows 
> "Chris"). And it closely resembles there XPaths too
> (see the last match 
> clause and compare it).
> 

The only problem is that if Chris has [1] and [6] as
documents, he will still be shown because he has one
document ([1]) that matches.  Only if Chris has *no*
matches at all was I trying to get this name to be
displayed.

> 
> > I know -- I come from a Java background so that's
> how
> > my XSLT will currently look until I figure out how
> to
> > do things better!
> >   
> 
> The trick with XSLT is: let XSLT do the work for
> you. You define the 
> rules, XSLT defines the execution path. This means:
> very few xsl:if and 
> xsl:choose and for-each, if any (but sometimes you
> do need them).
> 

Thanks for the feedback, also to David and Michael for
their help on this question as well.

Glen



 
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