Subject: Alphabetic sort retaining first letters as Headers
From: David Laurie <dlaurie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 11:48:48 -0700
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Hello XSL list,
I tried to send this last week but somehow my webmail converted all of my html
and xml code snippet into web display text. Apparently I need help with my
help :).
I have been trying to sort and display a a set of elements alphabetically and
grab the first letter for a group header. The header would only appear once
and won't appear if there is an empty set (eg. 'X'). For example I want to
transform something like:
<content>
<element>Bob</element>
<element>Craig</element>
<element>Al</element>
<element>Frank</element>
<element>Bill</element>
<element>Barb</element>
<element>Andrew</element>
<element>Felix</element>
<element>Farah</element>
</content>
into:
A
Andrew
Al
B
Barb
Bill
Bob
C
Craig
F
Farah
Felix
Frank
The xml I am using is not flat, ie. there are elements being sorted that are
'cousins' of one another, not just siblings. The xsl I have written so far
gets the sort OK and strips off the first letter but does so for each element
sorted.
I have tried to test the pulled letter against that of the following-sibling
but the sort interferes with that. I have also tried to create a variable for
the letter at the next position() but that didn't work either.
The xsl I use:
<xsl:template match="body" mode="alpha-title">
<xsl:for-each select="part/chapters/mapunits/maps">
<xsl:sort select="maptitle"/>
<xsl:variable name="maptitle" select="maptitle"/>
<xsl:variable name="firstletter" select="substring($maptitle,1,1)"/>
<div class="trackNumber">
<xsl:value-of select="$firstletter"/>
</div>
<div class="mapTitle">
<a
href="../../Maps/{../../@chap}/{../@mapunitNumber}/{@mapNumber}/Normal/">
<xsl:value-of select="maptitle"/>
</a>
</div>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
A relevant snippet of xml schema:
<body>
<part>
<chapters>
<mapunits>
<maptitle/>
<maps/>
</mapunits>
</chapters>
</part>
</body>
I am pulling all the maptitles and maps from all of the parts.
Has anyone tried something like this before?
Thanks for your time,
Dave
David Laurie
MA Humanities Computing
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