RE: [xsl] Selection Criteria in XSL

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

At 05:29 AM 3/22/01, Brent wrote:
>So my understanding is this:
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> > <xsl:template match="viewentries/viewentry">
> > <xsl:for-each
> > select="./entrydata[@columnnumber='1']/text='Autobiography'">
>
>You are trying to select the specific viewentry node, therefore you would
>have:  viewentries/viewentry[some criteria]

This is one approach: works fine. (Except the word 'criteria' is a plural! 
Sorry --- it's the English teacher in me.)

>Note:  With your's, after you piece together the match & the for-each, you
>get:  viewentries/viewentry/entrydata ...
>         >> This selects the actual entrydata node.
>         Also the /text isn't a node, or anything.  Maybe if the XML was 
> formed
><entrydata><text></text></entrydata>?

Exactly.

>Actually, I tried to do this selection in two parts, like yours, ie;
>         > <xsl:template match="viewentries/viewentry">
>         > <xsl:for-each 
> select=".[entrydata[@columnnumber='1']='Autobiography']">
>
>but it definitely did not like this.  Maybe someone can offer an
>explanation?

It's that illegal ".[entrydata[@columnnumber='1']='Autobiography']". The 
abbreviated step "." may not be used with a predicate. (A step may contain 
a predicate, but it may not have a predicate.)

But

select="./entrydata[@columnnumber='1']/text()='Autobiography'"

would work fine. More succinctly,

select="entrydata[@columnnumber='1']='Autobiography'"

would work too. (The leading ./ says "start at the context node", which is 
redundant. The trailing "/text()" is redundant in this case, because the 
value of the entrydata node is the concatenation of the values of its text 
node descendants -- and here, it has only one.)

Well done, Brent.

James, I hope all is clear.

Cheers,
Wendell

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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
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