Hi.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of thei
> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 5:31 PM
> To: XSL-List@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Sorting unsorted elements based on their attributes
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have an xml file as thus:
> 
> <comments>
> <comment page="20030101">blah</comment>
> <comment page="20030207">blah</comment>
> <comment page="20011127">blah</comment>
> ...etc
> </comments>
> 
> Each <comment> element has a page attribute, which contains a
> date in format CCYYMMDD as shown above.
> 
> I'm trying to use a XSL stylesheet to display these, or sort
> them if you prefer that wording, into a year/month/day type 
> format. In other words, if there's say 12 comments for 
> 2003-06-05, then I want to display all 12 in a list under the 
> heading 2003-06-05, then there may be another 4 comments for 
> 2003-06-04, which I want to display under their heading, etc. 
> I can do the displaying and all easily enough, but I'm having 
> trouble sorting the results into days and months.
> 

This is a grouping problem, see
http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/grouping.html for more information.

Meanwhile try this:

 <xsl:key name="comments" match="comment" use="@page"/>
 
 <xsl:template match="comments">
  <xsl:apply-templates
select="comment[generate-id()=generate-id(key('comments',@page))]"
mode="headers"/>
 </xsl:template>
 
 <xsl:template match="comment">
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
  <xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text>
 </xsl:template>
 
 <xsl:template match="comment" mode="headers">
  <xsl:value-of select="substring(@page,1,4)"/>
  <xsl:text>-</xsl:text>
  <xsl:value-of select="substring(@page,5,2)"/>
  <xsl:text>-</xsl:text>
  <xsl:value-of select="substring(@page,7,2)"/>
  <xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="key('comments',@page)"/>
 </xsl:template>

Hope this helps you



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