Re: [xsl] Node set

[Jeni Tennison <mail at jenitennison dot com>]

Hi YueMa,

> How can I create a node set with specific order other than document
> order?

As David "pure mathematician" Carlisle says, node sets aren't ordered,
so you can't create one with an order, but you can choose what order
to process them in.

> How about if I want to  display like:
> title2
> title4
> title1
> title3

Then apply templates (or use xsl:for-each) in that order:

  <xsl:apply-templates select="title2" />
  <xsl:apply-templates select="title4" />
  <xsl:apply-templates select="title1" />
  <xsl:apply-templates select="title3" />

This hardcodes into the stylesheet the order in which they're
processed in a certain context.  You could select the order in any
number of ways.
  
> the order is not fixed and may changd everytime, and even the number
> of titles are not guaranteed, maybe 4, maybe 3, etc.

There must be some underlying way of choosing which order you want
them in?  What is it?

> What I wanted to do is to create a node set with the particular
> order and then I can process elements just by using <xsl:for-each>,
> is that possible in XSL?

Not really (although you could feasibly create a result tree fragment
variable and then iterate over that with xsl:for-each having turned it
into a node set with an extension function).

If you apply templates to the nodes you want in order, as outlined
above, then you can have a template that matches any of them and that
contains whatever you want to put in the body of the xsl:for-each:

<xsl:template match="title1 | title2 | title3 | title4">
   ... body of the xsl:for-each ...
</xsl:template>

I hope that helps,

Jeni

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



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