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RE: [xsl] Formatting XSL for XML to CSV translation


Subject: RE: [xsl] Formatting XSL for XML to CSV translation
From: "Stuart Jones" <stuart.jones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 18:42:12 +0100

Firstly, thanks for all your help and advice!

> There is no need to enumerate all the fields.  It seems that 
> your row data is contained in attributes (next time, don't
> make us guess about that). If you do not name the fields, you
> remove the need to change the stylesheet if your data source
> design changes, and you make the styesheet simpler
> as well..

Sorry. I made some assumptions. I can see how the method you described Tom is much simpler. However, field order is important so I will have to reference the attributes individually. And I need to do a spot of processing on certain fields anyway (to satisfy the external system that will ultimately take the CSV as input).

> Your approach is a typical procedural programming approach -
> go through the fields you want one by one, and put them into
> the right position. With xslt it is almost always better to
> take a different approach.

Guilty as charged! It's pretty obvious now that I need to think on XSLT in a different way.

Thanks again (to all)
Stuart

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