Parsing through XSL and Retriving data

[sp]

i have an xml file

<catalog>
<cd>
<title>Empire Burlesque</title>
<artist>Bob Dylan</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>Columbia</company>
<price>10.90</price>
<year>1985</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Hide your heart</title>
<artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>CBS Records</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1988</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Greatest Hits</title>
<artist>Dolly Parton</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>RCA</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1982</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Still got the blues</title>
<artist>Gary Moore</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Virgin records</company>
<price>10.20</price>
<year>1990</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Eros</title>
<artist>Eros Ramazzotti</artist>
<country>EU</country>
<company>BMG</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1997</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>One night only</title>
<artist>Bee Gees</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Polydor</company>
<price>10.90</price>
<year>1998</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Sylvias Mother</title>
<artist>Dr.Hook</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>CBS</company>
<price>8.10</price>
<year>1973</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Maggie May</title>
<artist>Rod Stewart</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Pickwick</company>
<price>8.50</price>
<year>1990</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Romanza</title>
<artist>Andrea Bocelli</artist>
<country>EU</country>
<company>Polydor</company>
<price>10.80</price>
<year>1996</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>When a man loves a woman</title>
<artist>Percy Sledge</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>Atlantic</company>
<price>8.70</price>
<year>1987</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Black angel</title>
<artist>Savage Rose</artist>
<country>EU</country>
<company>Mega</company>
<price>10.90</price>
<year>1995</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>1999 Grammy Nominees</title>
<artist>Many</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>Grammy</company>
<price>10.20</price>
<year>1999</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>For the good times</title>
<artist>Kenny Rogers</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Mucik Master</company>
<price>8.70</price>
<year>1995</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Big Willie style</title>
<artist>Will Smith</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>Columbia</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1997</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Tupelo Honey</title>
<artist>Van Morrison</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Polydor</company>
<price>8.20</price>
<year>1971</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Soulsville</title>
<artist>Jorn Hoel</artist>
<country>Norway</country>
<company>WEA</company>
<price>7.90</price>
<year>1996</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>The very best of</title>
<artist>Cat Stevens</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Island</company>
<price>8.90</price>
<year>1990</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Stop</title>
<artist>Sam Brown</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>A and M</company>
<price>8.90</price>
<year>1988</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Bridge of Spies</title>
<artist>T`Pau</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Siren</company>
<price>7.90</price>
<year>1987</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Private Dancer</title>
<artist>Tina Turner</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>Capitol</company>
<price>8.90</price>
<year>1983</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Midt om natten</title>
<artist>Kim Larsen</artist>
<country>EU</country>
<company>Medley</company>
<price>7.80</price>
<year>1983</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Pavarotti Gala Concert</title>
<artist>Luciano Pavarotti</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>DECCA</company>
<price>9.90</price>
<year>1991</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>The dock of the bay</title>
<artist>Otis Redding</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>Atlantic</company>
<price>7.90</price>
<year>1987</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Picture book</title>
<artist>Simply Red</artist>
<country>EU</country>
<company>Elektra</company>
<price>7.20</price>
<year>1985</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Red</title>
<artist>The Communards</artist>
<country>UK</country>
<company>London</company>
<price>7.80</price>
<year>1987</year>
</cd>
<cd>
<title>Unchain my heart</title>
<artist>Joe Cocker</artist>
<country>USA</country>
<company>EMI</company>
<price>8.20</price>
<year>1987</year>
</cd>
</catalog>

now i am working in C++ and my requirement
is to get the artist of each cd and store it in a array

i wonder whether XSL could help me out in this scenario
as i dont find suitable XSL which will return me the artist name of
each cd element when i iterate

can anyone help me out whether using XSL is a good option for me if yes
how could i use in my case

-praveen

 

[Joe Kesselman]

i wonder whether XSL could help me out in this scenario

Depends on what you're trying to do.

If you want to build a new document based on data extracted from your
source document, that's exactly what XSLT is designed for.

If you just want to find the raw data so your C++ code can operate on
it, what you probably really want is XPath rather than XSLT. Given that
you say you want the artist names in an array -- without even the
context of which albums each artist was responsible for? -- this appears
to be what you're looking for. DOM Level 3 (if your libraries support
it) provides an API for XPath evaluation; if not, some of the XSLT
processors (such as Apache's Xalan) provide ways to invoke XPath against
a document.

The alternative, of course, is to write your own document scanning code
using either the SAX or DOM APIs and an XML parser. Given how simple
your example is, that's fairly easy to do and a good basic learning
exercise in how to manipulate XML data using those tools.