Hi Evan et al,

I am having a problem with document() as well.

Assume I have a file "file.xml", which I will generate occasionally and want
to merge into my document.  The current XSLT (call it "current.xsl") doesn't
call this file right now; the main file is named, oh, "main.xml".

The file "file.xml" looks like this:

<file>
   <first>the first element</first>
   <second>the second element</second>
   <third>the third element</third>
</file>

How do I call the document() function to get the individual nodes out of the
file "file.xml" to be used by FOP in "current.xsl"?

I tried a merge, but it basically gave me all of both files, then formatted
according to the "current.xsl".  Do I need to create a second style sheet to
use with xsl:apply-templates?  The information I found on the document()
function wasn't extensive.

Thanks,

Michael Gosselin
Athena Diagnostics, Inc.
Worcester, MA  01605



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Evan Lenz [mailto:evan@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 12:04 PM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re:  multiple source files map to multiple target files
>    
> However, assuming you have the XML source file that contains 
> the list of file names (URLs) that Michael mentioned, then a 
> single invocation of
> document() can return all the root nodes from your XML files. 
> (You don't have to do it individually for each one, e.g., 
> inside <xsl:for-each>.) And you don't need any extension 
> functions to do this.
> 
> Let's say you have a file named files.xml in the "config" 
> directory that contains this:
> 
> <files>
>     <file>input/foo.xml</file>
>     <file>input/bar.xml</file>
>     <file>input/bat.xml</file>
> </files>
> 
> Given the above document, the following expression will 
> return a node-set containing three root nodes, corresponding 
> to the three files listed.
> 
> document(document('config/files.xml')/files/file)
> 
> The file names are resolved relative to the location of 
> files.xml by default, i.e. from the "config" directory in 
> this case. The XSLT processor will look for an "input" 
> directory inside the "config" 
> directory. If you want to resolve them relative to your main 
> source document (rather than from the "config" directory), 
> then you could use the second (optional) argument to the 
> document() function, like so:
> 
> document(document('config/files.xml')/files/file, /)
> 
> The / in the second argument tells the function to resolve 
> the URLs relative to the base URI of the source document 
> instead of from the config directory (where files.xml lives). 
> The XSLT processor will look for an "input" directory inside 
> whatever directory your source document came from.
> 
> Finally, if you want to resolve them relative to the 
> stylesheet's base URI, you would use this:
> 
> document(document('config/files.xml')/files/file, document(''))
> 
> The document('') in the second argument returns the root node 
> of the stylesheet itself, so the relative URLs in files.xml 
> are resolved relative to the base URI of the stylesheet. The 
> XSLT processor will look for an "input" directory insider 
> whatever directory your stylesheet came from.
> 
> One more note: all the above examples assume that the 
> "config" directory is in the same directory as the 
> stylesheet. When you pass document() a string as the first 
> argument it assumes the base URI of the stylesheet. 
> When you pass it a node-set as the first argument (as we did 
> with the <file> elements), then the function uses the base 
> URI of each node in the node-set. In either case, you can 
> override the base URI behavior by using the second optional 
> argument (which must be a node-set). So, for example, if the 
> "config" directory is in the same location as your source 
> document, then you'd want to substitute this to grab the root 
> node of files.xml in each of the above examples:
> 
> document('config/files.xml', /)