Recipe showing how to place all table fields in one set. This simplifies some types of query.

• For further details on this technique go to http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipxsltmp.html

Sample Tables

Annotated Query

%XSLTSTART{id="%WEB%" benchmark="off" debug="off" }% 
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets"
  xmlns:exslt="http://exslt.org/common"
  extension-element-prefixes="set">

<!-- place each field in a set with attributes for table, title, row & column info --> 
<!-- The field title is taken as the value in the first row of this column -->

<xsl:variable name="fields_by_column">
    <!-- http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipxsltmp.html -->
    <xsl:call-template name="find_fields_by_column"/>
</xsl:variable>

<!-- This template processes each field and tranforms it into a node /fields/field -->
<xsl:template name="find_fields_by_column">
    <xsl:param name="find_table"/>
    <fields>
    <!-- process each table -->
    <xsl:for-each select="/twiki/web/topic/data/tables/table">
        <!-- extract the table name and topic name -->
        <xsl:variable name="table" select="@name"/>
        <xsl:variable name="topic" select="../../@topic"/>

    <!-- process each row after the first header row -->
    <xsl:for-each select="row[position()>1]">
        <xsl:variable name="row" select="position()"/>
        <xsl:for-each select="field">
            <xsl:variable name="col" select="position()"/>
            <field>
                <xsl:attribute name="title">
                  <!-- extract the title from the field in the same column 1st row -->
                  <xsl:value-of select="../../row[1]/field[position() = $col]"/>
                </xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:attribute name="column">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$col"/>
                </xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:attribute name="row">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$row"/>
                </xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:attribute name="table">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$table"/>
                </xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:attribute name="topic">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$topic"/>
                </xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
            </field>
        </xsl:for-each>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:for-each>
    </fields>
</xsl:template>



<xsl:template match="/">
<table>

<tr><th>Name</th><th>Value</th><th>Table</th><th>Title</th><th>Topic</th><th>Column</th><th>Row</th></tr>

<!-- use exslt:node-set to allow the parsing of the variable as a set of nodes -->
<xsl:for-each select="exslt:node-set($fields_by_column)//field">
     <tr>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/> </td>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </td>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="@table"/> </td>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="@title"/> </td>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="@topic"/> </td>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="@column"/> </td>
          <td> <xsl:value-of select="@row"/> </td>
     </tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>

</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
%XSLTEND%

XSLT Demo Transformed Table

%XSLTSTART{id="Plugins" benchmark="off" debug="off" }% <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets" xmlns:exslt="http://exslt.org/common" extension-element-prefixes="set">

<xsl:call-template name="find_fields_by_column"/>

<xsl:for-each select="/twiki/web/topic/data/tables/table">

<xsl:for-each select="row[position()>1]"> <xsl:for-each select="field"> <xsl:value-of select="../../row[1]/field[position() = $col]"/> <xsl:value-of select="$col"/> <xsl:value-of select="$row"/> <xsl:value-of select="$table"/> <xsl:value-of select="$topic"/> <xsl:value-of select="text()"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:for-each>

<xsl:for-each select="exslt:node-set($fields_by_column)//field">

%XSLTEND%