Скачать или смотреть How to Select Attributes from Another Node in XSLT

Discover how to successfully select attributes from a different node in XSLT for generating CSV outputs while maintaining the correct order!
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Selecting Attributes from Another Node in XSLT: A Step-by-Step Guide

When working with XML data, it’s common to employ XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) to transform and manipulate XML documents into different formats, such as CSV (Comma-Separated Values). However, one challenge you might encounter is ensuring that the attributes are displayed in the correct order, especially when selecting attributes from another node.

In this guide, we will explore a practical scenario where you need to generate a CSV output that maintains the order specified in a headers section of your XML.

The Problem: Incorrect Attribute Ordering

Imagine you have the following XML structure:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

You want to transform this XML into a CSV format that contains the data in the order specified by the header nodes. However, the original XSLT code doesn't seem to reproduce the required output. Instead, it outputs it incorrectly:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

The Solution: Correcting the XSLT Code

The issue arises because attributes in XML do not have a set order, whereas elements do. To capture the order from the headers, you'll need to tweak your XSLT as follows:

Step 1: Define the XSLT Structure

Begin by defining the basic structure of your XSLT. Here’s a refined version of the stylesheet that addresses the ordering issue:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 2: Explain the Key Changes

Variable Declaration: The variable data is defined within the data template to hold the current node's context. This makes it easier to access the attributes.

Using the Header Order: The xsl:for-each loop now iterates through the header elements. This ensures that the extraction of attributes from data nodes follows the order defined in headers.

Simplifying Attribute Access: The expression $data/@ *[name()=current()/@ value] will fetch the attribute that matches the current header value, thus preserving the desired order.

Step 3: Expected Output

Upon applying the modified XSLT code, the expected CSV output will be:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This output reflects the correct ordering of headers and corresponding data rows.

Conclusion

Using XSLT effectively requires understanding how to manipulate XML elements and attributes correctly. In this guide, we tackled the problem of selecting attributes from a different node while respecting the order defined in a headers section. By adjusting the XSLT logic to iterate through the headers rather than directly through attributes, we achieved a well-structured output.

For anyone working with XML and XSLT, remember that while attributes have no fixed order, the order of elements can be leveraged to achieve the desired results in your transformations.