Re: Apply-templates for getting around my XML doc?

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

Hi Edmund,

At 10:33 AM 10/11/00 -0400, you wrote:
>OK. If I wanted to process specific elements only, and no others, in the 
>order listed in the stylesheet,
>would the following XSLT be a correct way to navigate around?
><xsl:stylesheet etc.>
>    <xsl:template match='/'>
>       <xsl:apply-templates select="/L/0/iii"/>   <!-- does this pass the 
> ball directly to the template listed  below?-->
>    </xsl:template>
>
>   <xsl:template match="/L/8/iii">
>     <!--do something-->
>     <xsl:apply-templates select="/X/4/vii"/>  <!--and then does this go 
> to the  next template?-->
>  </xsl:template>

...Leaving aside that your element names couldn't actually be '0', '1', but 
would have to be 'A0' 'A1' etc. -- element names can't start with numerals ...

/L/8/iii would only match if your document element were L ... which it 
can't be, since you stipulate it's a sibling of M, X etc. (and well-formed 
documents can only have one document element). This is because the XPath 
location path starting with / navigates down from the root, which is above 
the document element.

So I'm surprised that these templates are matching at all.
>Hopefully this can eliminate [this style of navigating] as a potential 
>error.  I don't understand how the processor thinks, and I had some 
>problems with templates being ignored,  but a wise man recommended this 
>style as a [simple-enough-for-even-me-to-understand] potential 
>solution.  Have I missed even that boat?

Well, it's not that bad. It's really a case of fathoming the subtleties of 
XPath.

Try it again with examples like

<xsl:template match="X/8/iii">
   <xsl:apply-templates select="//L/4/ii"/>
</xsl:template>

and such like (note the positions of the slashes). Performance on this will 
be poor (that select expression is going to traverse the entire document 
looking for nodes), but it should work.

There are undoubtedly other ways to approach this problem, but my head is 
hurting after a day of teaching....

Good luck,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
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