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[xsl] XSL/XPath Dynamic sort key


Subject: [xsl] XSL/XPath Dynamic sort key
From: "Fett Boba" <stucco_junk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 21:35:39 +0000

I know I know, it's not possible. Well I've got this line working so far, so I'm halfway through the "this is impossible in XSL" process so far. First some params, then some XSL.

<xsl:param name="sort_select_lvl_1">author</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_select_lvl_2">/</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_select_lvl_3">last_name</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_order">ascending</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="sort_data_type">text</xsl:param>

<xsl:apply-templates select="document">
<xsl:sort select="*[name()=$sort_select_lvl_1]" data-type="{$sort_data_type}" order="{$sort_order}" />
</xsl:apply-templates>



Now here's what I want. Sometimes I want to sort by uid, accesses, which works fine. Other times I want to sort by author/last_name. Now I can do this by changing the sort line to this...


<xsl:sort select="*[name()=$sort_select_lvl_1]\*[name()=$sort_select_lvl_2]" data-type="{$sort_data_type}" order="{$sort_order}" />

But then it doesn't work for uid or accesses anymore because the "\" at the end of the string. If I remove the "\" i get a number expected error. So I've come up with half a way around it. I figure I will have lots of variables at the top, lvl_1 through 4 so that I can fill them all with parts of an xpath statement and then join them togather. So I try it and unfortunately xpath's concat does not let the sort select evaluate the xpath statement. In other words

xsl:sort select="concat('author','/','last_name')" />
is not the same as
<xsl:sort select="author/last_name" />

So how do I string togather the *[name()=$sort_select_lvl_1], one directly after the other? I set the defaults in the xslt above to reflect a reference to "author/last_name".


Glimpse of XML


<catalog>
 <document>
   <uid>2301</uid>
   <url>http://www.who.com/document.htm</url>
   <subject>General Stuff</subject>
   <abstract>This is an abstractabstract>
   <accesses>1</accesses>
   <age>4</age>
   <last_accessed date="20011229">12/29/2001</last_accessed>
   <author>
     <first_name>Peon</first_name>
     <last_name>lover</last_name>
     <serial>9A1551645</serial>
   </author>
   <owner>
     <first_name>Jolly</first_name>
     <last_name>Goose</last_name>
     <serial>123456</serial>
   </owner>
   <manager>
     <first_name>Someone</first_name>
     <last_name>Special</last_name>
     <serial>123456</serial>
   </manager>
   <supervisor>
     <first_name>Someone</first_name>
     <last_name>Important</last_name>
     <serial>123456</serial>
   </supervisor>
 </document>
 ...
</catalog>

Thanks in advance!

Aaron

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