Re: xslt sort dilemna

Thanks. I was thinking that sort gets applied to output if it's put
inside xsl:apply-templates, but it looks like it just works on input.
Thanks for the explanation.

Is there a way I could do this in one xslt itself?

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:57 AM, Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mohit,
>
> In order to understand where to put the xsl:sort instruction, you need to
> understand what it does. It really isn't "sorting" anything. XSLT is a
> declarative language, so any XSLT stylesheet is really a specification for
> how an XSLT processor is supposed to build its result out of its input.
> Along these lines, xsl:sort overrides the processor's ordinary behavior, in
> which the order of the results corresponds to the order of elements in the
> input from which the results are built, and instead corresponds to a sorted
> order in the input.
>
> So you're not really "apply[ing] sort" on any output, merged or not. If you
> really want to sort your output, the easiest way to do that is to run a
> second transformation in which your input is the output of the first
> transformation.
>
> And what you'd want is probably something like (what you said you've tried)
>
> <xsl:for-each select="//ret|$file2//ret">
>  <xsl:sort select="filing"  order="ascending" data-type="text"/>
>  <xsl:sort select="State" order="ascending"  data-type="number"/>
>
> Assuming your input 'ret' elements all have both 'filing' and 'State' child
> elements.
>
> Now why isn't this working? You say your sort on 'filing' is working, only
> the 'ret' elements from the two input documents are not sorted together.
> This might well be a bug in your processor, which might have evaded
> detection since this is actually a fairly rare thing to be doing. Careful
> testing can determine this, but in the meantime you might try something
> like:
>
> <xsl:variable name="merged-set" select="//ret|$file2//ret"/>
> <xsl:for-each select="$merged-set">
>  <xsl:sort ...
>
> Conceivably, this could fool the processor into treating the two sets of
> nodes as one, as you want them to be treated.
>
> Even if this works, you should tell us what processor you are using so that
> others may try to duplicate the bug, if that's what it is. (Several
> developers of processors monitor this list to see what bugs might be
> reported.)
>
> As to why your sort on 'State' elements is not working, you need to show us
> your input data (again?) if we are to see what could be going wrong there.
> Without seeing the input (which you should post in reduced form with your
> question, so the email is self-contained and does not require us to look
> back in the archive ), it's really impossible to know anything for certain.
>
> Cheers,
> Wendell
>
>
> At 02:10 PM 9/9/2008, you wrote:
>>
>> I have 2 xml that I am merging, something like this:
>>
>>          <xsl:for-each select="//ret|$file2//ret">
>>             <xsl:element name="{name()}" namespace="{namespace-uri()}">
>>              <xsl:apply-templates>
>>                <xsl:sort select="filing"  order="ascending"
>> data-type="text"/>
>>                <xsl:sort select="State" order="ascending"
>>  data-type="number"/>
>>              </xsl:apply-templates>
>>             </xsl:element>
>>          </xsl:for-each>
>>
>>
>> Couple of questions:
>> 1. Above xsl:for-each merges 2 xml documents. Now I want to apply sort
>> on the merged output. I tried putting sort inside apply-templates as
>> well as moving inside for-each. It doesn't seem to work. I am trying
>> to sort on 2 elements. Is there a way I can sort on merged output.
>>
>> 2. Also, when I put sort in for-each it sort only one document at a
>> time, but second sort on "State" doesn't work.
>
>
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