Retreive only certain changing elements from xml with xsl 1

sullivans20 · May 16, 2007

I am having trouble trying to figure out how exactly I can grab different "cubes" with different ids on the fly so to speak. First here is my cube.xml file:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="cube.xsl"?>
<office>
	<cube id="001">
		<empName>Removed</empName>
		<phoneNum>xxx</phoneNum>
		<machineName>Removed</machineName>
		<ip>Removed</ip>
	</cube>
	<cube id="002">
		<empName>Removed</empName>
		<phoneNum>xxx</phoneNum>
		<machineName>Removed</machineName>
		<ip>Removed</ip>
	</cube>
</office>

Now the above xml file would go all the way to 68 but I cut the rest out to save space. Now here is the xsl stylesheet i'm using to style the xml document (cube.xsl):

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">[/URL]
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
  <body>
  	<xsl:for-each select="//cube[@id='001']">
    	<p align="center">
	    	<b>
	    		<u>
	    			Detailed Information For <xsl:value-of select="empName"/>
	    		</u>
	    	</b>
	    </p>
	    <br />
	    <table border="1">
	    	<tr bgcolor="#6183A6">
	  	       <th align="left">Employee Name</th>
	  	 	   <th align="left">Phone Number</th>
	  	 	   <th align="left">Machine Name</th>
	  	 	   <th align="left">IP Address</th>
	    	</tr>
     
 	   		<tr>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="empName"/></td>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="phoneNum"/></td>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="machineName"/></td>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="ip"/></td>
	    	</tr>
	    </table>
     </xsl:for-each>
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Here is the page i'm calling the xml file from (you can ignore the second xml file troubleLog.xml for now in the second frame):

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">[/URL]
<html>
	<head>
		<title>Floor Plan - Cube One</title>
		<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
		<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
		<link rel="shortcut icon" href="img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> 
	</head>       
	<frameset border="1" cols="375,*" frameBorder="0" frameSpacing="4">
	<noframes>
		<body>
		</body>
	</noframes>
		<frame name="right" src="cube.xml">
		<frame name="left" src="troubleLog.xml">
	</frameset>
</html>

As you can see right now I have cube.xsl hard coded to only retrieve records matching cube="001". This is no good because I might want to retreive any other record 1-68 in cube.xml.

Let me try and give you a bigger picture to try and help you better understand what i'm trying to do. On my main page I have a huge graphic of a office floor. When the user clicks on a cubicle it will bring up information about the employee who sits there. It will also have a trouble shooting log for each person (thats what troubleLog.xml is for). All this will be determined though by what cube a user clicks on.

If a user clicks cube 2 they should only get the information returned to them matching cube id="002". My problem right now is figuring out how exactly I can do this. I'm not sure exactly how I can accomplish this. I know I could do it if I made a new xml and xsl file for each cube but this seems like a really dirty hack (not to mention super tedious). If anyone has an idea i'd love to hear it.

tsuji · May 17, 2007

If the xml application is critically depending on xml-stylesheet processing instruction, maybe you can try some of the suggestions made in this thread.

http://tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1365988&page=1

sullivans20 · May 17, 2007

Thanks for the help. I tried to follow your advice and now my cube.xml file looks like this:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="cube.xsl"?>
<?nmode 1?>
<office>
    <cube id="001">
        <empName>Removed</empName>
        <phoneNum>xxx</phoneNum>
        <machineName>Removed</machineName>
        <ip>Removed</ip>
    </cube>
    <cube id="002">
        <empName>Removed</empName>
        <phoneNum>xxx</phoneNum>
        <machineName>Removed</machineName>
        <ip>Removed</ip>
    </cube>
</office>

As you can see I added <?nmode 1?> to the file for testing purposes. I also made modifications to my cube.xsl file:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">[/URL]

<xsl:param name="nmode">
    <xsl:value-of select="(//processing-instruction('//cube[@id=001]')[name()='nmode'])[1]" />
    
    <xsl:template match="/">

	<html>
  	<body>
      	<p align="center">
	    	<b>
	    		<u>
	    			Detailed Information For <xsl:value-of select="empName"/>
	    		</u>
	    	</b>
	    </p>
	    <br />
	    <table border="1">
	    	<tr bgcolor="#6183A6">
	  	       <th align="left">Employee Name</th>
	  	 	   <th align="left">Phone Number</th>
	  	 	   <th align="left">Machine Name</th>
	  	 	   <th align="left">IP Address</th>
	    	</tr>
     
 	   		<tr>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="empName"/></td>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="phoneNum"/></td>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="machineName"/></td>
	    	  <td><xsl:value-of select="ip"/></td>
	    	</tr>
	    </table>
    </body>
	</html>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:param>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I think everything is working because now when i open cube.xml I just get a blank screen. I think this is because I am just linking directly to cube.xml without giving it any parameters. Is there anyway I could specify the parameter to pass to cube.xml in a link in HTML? Or do I have to use javascript to do this? If I have to use javascript do you have any good code samples?

Thanks.

tsuji · May 17, 2007

That seems to be an insufficient understanding to what discussed there. It is very far off the point that I would exhaust me just to pointing them out.

In any case, you have to redesign the mechanics of the page. The iframe src should point to a server-side page with some querystring (?id=xxx). That part is set by some client-side scripting of some event handler.

The src page should be a page [1] taking in the querystring("id") into a server-side variable. [2] Then the page would call loading the xml source document and xsl document with [3] the parameter set by the querystring. Then [4] the transformation is done with the ingredients now all ready, namely, xml & xsl & parameters. [5] The output is then sent to the iframe.

The setting up of the parameter looks like this.
[tt]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="

http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

[blue]<xsl

aram name="s_id" />[/blue]
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<xsl:for-each select="//cube[@id=[blue]$s_id[/blue]]">
<p align="center">
<b>
<u>
Detailed Information For <xsl:value-of select="empName"/>
</u>
</b>
</p>
<br />
<table border="1">
<tr bgcolor="#6183A6">
<th align="left">Employee Name</th>
<th align="left">Phone Number</th>
<th align="left">Machine Name</th>
<th align="left">IP Address</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select="empName"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="phoneNum"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="machineName"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="ip"/></td>
</tr>
</table>
</xsl:for-each>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
[/tt]
The parameter s_id is empty in the xsl document. But before the transformation takes place, it is set to the querystring id by the server-side script.

That is the layout of the program to realize this functionality. It is not small task if you are not familiar with any one part of sub-task.

sullivans20 · May 17, 2007

Thank you for the detailed response. This makes a whole lot more sense now. Thanks again.

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Retreive only certain changing elements from xml with xsl 1

sullivans20

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tsuji

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sullivans20

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tsuji

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sullivans20

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