Re: processing alternating sibling nodes

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Subject: Re: processing alternating sibling nodes
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 16:20:35 -0500

Steve,

The trouble is here:

At 03:38 PM 12/31/2002, you wrote:

>               <xsl:for-each select="descendant::question">
>                       <xsl:value-of select="text"/>
>                       <xsl:value-of select="reference"/>
>               </xsl:for-each>

Since you have a single <question> descendant of the context node, the context shifts to that; the stylesheet then puts out values of the sets of "text" element children (select="text") and reference children (select="reference").

However, the 'value-of' instruction you are using explicitly pulls out a string value; since the string value of a set of nodes is defined (in XPath 1.0) as the string value of the first node in the set (in document order), that's what you're getting: your first <text> followed by the first <reference>.

I'd suggest junking the for-each instruction (it's doing nothing but changing the context node) and instead saying in its place,

<xsl:apply-templates select="question/text"/>

which tells the processor to process (by applying templates to) *all* the <text> children of the <question> children of the context node. Then write another template for the text, as in

<xsl:template match="text">
  <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  <xsl:value-of select="following-sibling::reference[1]"/>
</xsl:template>

This time, for each text node its own value is reported (a string value of a node set with one member: no problem), and then the value of its next following reference element is reported.

The logic here assumes you have a straight text/reference/text/reference sequence of simple pairs (no helpful wrappers). You will need to qualify it further if your data is not so regular.

(Of course this could also be done within your for-each if you really wanted.)

I hope that helps,
Wendell


======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================

XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

Current Thread
processing alternating sibling nodes Wright, Steve - Tue, 31 Dec 2002 15:38:01 -0500 (EST) Tobias Reif - Tue, 31 Dec 2002 16:26:41 -0500 (EST) Wendell Piez - Tue, 31 Dec 2002 16:27:48 -0500 (EST) <= <Possible follow-ups> Wright, Steve - Tue, 31 Dec 2002 18:31:06 -0500 (EST)

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Re: processing alternating si, Tobias Reif	Thread	RE: processing alternating si, Wright, Steve
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