xml/xslt help

[Bob (81)]

I am having problems turning my xml into html for display. A sample xml file is given below, followed by my pathetic xslt attempt to transform it into html. A textual representation of what I was hoping to see is last. I am using saxon to do the transformation.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Whatever>
<Company>Company One
<DateRange>21-27Mar2004</DateRange>
<SubOrg>Division A
<Data>163
<Description>A description of 163, Div A, Comp A</Description> </Data> <Data>201 <Description>Description of 201, Div. A, Comp A</Description> </Data> </SubOrg> <SubOrg>Division B <Data>213 <Description>More descriptive text.</Description> </Data> <Data>222 <Description>Again, more stuff.</Description> </Data> </SubOrg> </Company> </Whatever>

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <xsl:template match="/"> <html> <head><title>Title Information</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <p align="center"><font size="+3">Report</font></p> <xsl:apply-templates/> </body> </html> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="Company"> <br/> <p><font size="+2" color="green"><xsl:value-of select="."/></font></p> <xsl:apply-templates select="DateRange"/> <xsl:apply-templates select="SubOrg"/> <xsl:apply-templates select="Data"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="DateRange"> <p><font color="blue"><xsl:value-of select="."/></font></p> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="SubOrg"> <br/><font size="+1" color="red"><xsl:value-of select="."/></font> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="Data"> <br/><font color="black"><xsl:value-of select="."/></font> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

What I would like to see is some html that would appear somewhat like this:
Report
Company One
21-27Mar2004
Division A
163 - A description of 163, Div A, Comp A
201 - Description of 201, Div. A, Comp A
Division B
213 -
222 -
Company Two
07-14Apr2004
Division A
128 -
Division B
221 -
234 -

etc...

I am using saxon to turn the xml/xslt into html. It's probably obvious that I'm not getting the html I wanted.

Can any provide some help? Thanks in advance!

Bob.

 

[Ben Edgington]

I am having problems turning my xml into html for display. A sample xml file is given below, followed by my pathetic xslt attempt to transform it into html. A textual representation of what I was hoping to see is last. I am using saxon to do the transformation.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Whatever>
<Company>Company One
<DateRange>21-27Mar2004</DateRange>
<SubOrg>Division A
<Data>163
<Description>A description of 163, Div A, Comp A</Description> </Data> <Data>201 <Description>Description of 201, Div. A, Comp A</Description> </Data> </SubOrg> <SubOrg>Division B <Data>213 <Description>More descriptive text.</Description> </Data> <Data>222 <Description>Again, more stuff.</Description> </Data> </SubOrg> </Company> </Whatever>

You've got the right idea, but a couple of comments:

- the difficulty with your XML is that not every item is wrapped up individually as an element. So in

<Data>163
<Description>A description of 163, Div A, Comp A</Description> </Data>

the Data element contains two nodes: a text node and a Description node. Your <xsl:value-of select="."/> extracts the text of both. Extracting just the text node is ugly: you can use text, but you get all the newlines and junk, so I used normalize-space(text).

It would be much neater and flexible if you could rewrite this as

<Data>
<Title>163</Title>
<Description>A description of 163, Div A, Comp A</Description> </Data>

for example.

- You should read up on CSS. <p align="center"><font size="+3"> Report</font></p> is truly horrible. The modern way is to mark it up as <h1> or whatever and use CSS to style it.

This transformation with your data

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head><title>Title Information</title></head>
<body>
<h1>Report</h1>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Company">
<h2><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(text)"/></h2> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="DateRange">
<h3><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(text)"/></h3> </xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="SubOrg">
<h4><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(text)"/></h4> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Data">
<p>
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(text)"/>
<xsl:text> - </xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="Description"/>
</p>
</xsl:template>

<!-- Omit text not explicitly dealt with above -->
<xsl:template match="text"/>

</xsl:stylesheet>

gives

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Title Information</title> </head> <body> <h1>Report</h1> <h2>Company One</h2> <h3>21-27Mar2004</h3> <h4>Division A</h4> <p>163 - A description of 163, Div A, Comp A</p> <p>201 - Description of 201, Div. A, Comp A</p> <h4>Division B</h4> <p>213 - More descriptive text.</p> <p>222 - Again, more stuff.</p> </body> </html>

Which is approximately what you want.

 

[Bob (81)]

Ben,

Thanks for the help - it is greatly appreciated. I'm going to give it a try this morning.

Bob.