Re: [xsl] Filling gaps in a list of values

[Jeni Tennison <jeni at jenitennison dot com>]

Hi Ben,

> Is it possible to sort the nodes and put them in a variable. ie
>
> <xsl:variable name="sorted">
>         <xsl:for-each select="nodes[@order]">
>                 <xsl:sort select="@order" order="descending"/>
>                 <xsl:copy-of select="current()"/>
>         </xsl:for-each>
> </xsl:variable>
>
> (I know this doesn't work but could it work with the correct lines
> of code? Or is it fatally flawed?)

Yes, you can do this, but when you set a variable via its content then
it gets set to a result tree fragment. To get any information out of
the result tree fragment, you need to convert it to a node set using
an extension node-set() function (whatever one your processor
supports).

This wouldn't be a bad method of getting the minimum and maximum
values for the recursion, considering that you get both the minimum
and maximum at the same time. You'd have to see, but it's likely that
a recursive method (or even better, a built-in extension function)
would be faster, but this is fairly simple.

If I were doing it, I'd try to make the result tree fragment quite
small, so simply make it:

  <xsl:variable name="minAndMax-rtf">
    <xsl:for-each select="node[@order]">
      <xsl:sort select="@order" order="descending"
                data-type="number" />
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="position() = 1">
          <max><xsl:value-of select="@order" /></max>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:when test="position() = last()">
          <min><xsl:value-of select="@order" /></min>
        </xsl:when>
      </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:variable>

And then do:

  <xsl:variable name="minAndMax"
                select="exsl:node-set($minAndMax-rtf)/*" />
  <xsl:call-template name="countDown">
    <xsl:with-param name="from" select="$minAndMax/max" />
    <xsl:with-param name="to" select="$minAndMax/min" />
  </xsl:call-template>

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/


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