Oxygen XML Forum

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 3:26 pm**

I'm looking for an XSLT 1.0 solution to merge element values for similar items into comma separated list in the following way:
XML:

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<results>

  <row>

    <number>1</number>

    <field>A</field>

  </row>

  <row>

    <number>1</number>

    <field>B</field>

  </row>

  <row>

    <number>2</number>

    <field>C</field>

  </row>

</results>

Wanted result:

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<results>

  <row>

    <number>1</number>

    <field>A, B</field>

  </row>

  <row>

    <number>2</number>

    <field>C</field>

  </row>

</results>

The number of entries for each given 'number' is not known in advance.

Any help appreciated.

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 3:48 pm**

Hi,

This is a grouping problem. A possible solution is to define a key to match all the rows based in the number. Then you can match only on the first row element that has a specific number and generate the new row there. For the field content iterate all the rows with the same number ang generate the field content from them:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

    <xsl:output indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:key name="rowsByNumber" match="row" use="number"/>

    <xsl:template match="results">

        <results><xsl:apply-templates/></results>

    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="row[generate-id(.)=generate-id(key('rowsByNumber', number)[1])]">

        <row>

            <xsl:copy-of select="number"/>

            <field>

                <xsl:for-each select="key('rowsByNumber', number)">

                    <xsl:value-of select="field"/>

                    <xsl:if test="position()!=last()">, </xsl:if>

                </xsl:for-each>

            </field>

        </row>

    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="*"/>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Best Regards,
George

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 2:00 am**

Got that working. Thanks George!
Never done any grouping with keys before (pretty new to all this), so I wouldn't have figured that out by myself.

As an extension to the problem, I've found that sometimes there are empty values for 'field' for a given 'number' and sometimes there are duplicate values of 'field', so now I need to apply the above but only when the next value of 'field' is not empty and not a duplicate value for the current 'number'.

I'm assuming some if statements will be needed - any suggestions/solutions you could add would again be appreciated.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 2:28 am**

DarkStar wrote: I'm assuming some if statements will be needed - any suggestions/solutions you could add would again be appreciated.

Half way there. Used

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<xsl:if test="not(field = '')">

around the two lines inside the for-each. That makes it ignore empty values of 'field'.

This means that something like

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<xsl:if test="not((field = '') or (IsItADuplicateCheck))">

would finish off my problem. Just need to figure out how to do the IsItADuplicateCheck. Can't do a string compare() as it's not 2 strings. What do I need to see if value is already present within the current set of selected 'number's?

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:03 am**

DarkStar wrote: Just need to figure out how to do the IsItADuplicateCheck.

OK, sorted it out with

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field != preceding::row[number = current()/number]/field

as the check for duplicates. Works nicely.

Oxygen XML Forum

Merging element values

Merging element values