XSL variables where element is null or doesn't exist

Question

Excuse any poor code or terrible language!

I have XML which contains group level elements with product level elements within, please see example XML below:

<group id="392483" subtype="CMS Item Group" created="27/01/14" modified="15/10/14">
<attribute definition_id="23" modified="10/02/14" is_name="true" is_identifier="true" scope="global" type="text">
<data language="English" label="CMS Item Group Name">A4 96 PAGE EXERCISE BOOKS - Clearance. Now X coded Feb14</data>
</attribute>

<attribute definition_id="606" modified="25/09/14" scope="global" type="text">
<data language="English" label="Newweb: Config Group Att">Colour_132|Margin_150|Ruling_151</data>
</attribute>


<product id="93254" subtype="CMS Product" created="28/07/08" modified="16/04/15">
<attribute definition_id="26" modified="28/07/08" is_name="true" is_identifier="true" scope="global" type="text">
<data language="English" label="CMS Product Name">000854</data>
</attribute>

<attribute definition_id="132" modified="02/08/11" scope="global" type="text">
<data language="English" label="Colour">Red</data>
</attribute>

</product>
</group>

My goal is to take the "Newweb: Config Group Att" value from the group element, and query the product element to see whether it contains a value for this particular attribute. E.g. in the example above, product code 000854 has a colour of "Red".

The syntax of the Newweb attribute is "attributename_id" - all attribute ids are 3 digits in length.

So far I have the following XSL which creates variables for the Newweb attribute, stripping out any alpha text and splitting the remaining string into 3 digit values.

I then need to query the product element to identify where the attribute ids stored in the variables are either missing or do not exist.

(I am only concerned with groups that have more than 1 child product element)

XSL:

<xsl:template match="product[@subtype = 'CMS Product']">

<xsl:variable name="newweb" select="../attribute/data[@label='Newweb: Config Group Att']" />
 <xsl:variable name="replacetext" select="replace($newweb, '[^0-9]', '')" />
  <xsl:variable name="first" select="substring($replacetext, 0, 4)" />
   <xsl:variable name="second" select="substring($replacetext, 4, 3)" />
     <xsl:variable name="third" select="substring($replacetext, 7, 3)" />
         <xsl:variable name="fourth" select="substring($replacetext, 10, 3)" />
            <xsl:variable name="prodcount" select="count(../product)" /> 

<xsl:if test="$prodcount > 1">

<xsl:for-each select="attribute">
<xsl:if test="@definition_id = 26"> 
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(data)" />
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>&#x9;</xsl:text>

<xsl:for-each select="attribute">
<xsl:if test="(@definition_id = $first)"> 
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(data)" />
<xsl:text>&#x9;</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>

Currently this returns product code and the value against the variable $first. Although I was pleased with progress I was making (first time using variables yesterday) - this does no provide me the output I need.

Ideally I want to highlight, for a product code that is missing or has no value against attribute id stored in $first, what the attribute is and the fact it is missing.

It would be helpful if I could use the attribute name (Colour instead of 132) - though I realise this means changing my variables. If this is easy enough please advise!

Thanks in advance!

Jimmy

Not able to read so long texts. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/825831/check-if-a-string-is-null-or-empty-in-xslt — Sanjeev Singh, Apr 28 '15 at 09:11
I have read this question and tried doing this, but I am returned a value for every single attribute element within the product. — Jimmy Sumpter, Apr 28 '15 at 09:27
Sorry Tim, some closing tags were missed when copy/pasting. Now amended. — Jimmy Sumpter, Apr 28 '15 at 09:49
Excuse the OCD, but ` ` === ` ` as far as any XML parser's concerned. Anyway, I don't really understand the question fully, but if you're new to variables, you might not realise you can actually put conditionals inside a variable definition: `....`. — Flynn1179, Apr 28 '15 at 13:05

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 28 '15 at 10:13

Could you not simplify this question? I was barely able to understand this part:

My goal is to take the "Newweb: Config Group Att" value from the group element, and query the product element to see whether it contains a value for this particular attribute. E.g. in the example above, product code 000854 has a colour of "Red".

If you apply the following template to the product:

<xsl:template match="product">
    <xsl:variable name="current-product" select="."/>
    <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(../attribute/data[@label='Newweb: Config Group Att'], '\|')">
        <param name="{substring-before(., '_')}">
            <xsl:value-of select="key('attr', substring-after(., '_'), $current-product)/data" />
        </param>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

after having defined a top-level key as:

<xsl:key name="attr" match="attribute" use="@definition_id" />

you will get a result like this:

<param name="Colour">Red</param>
<param name="Margin"/>
<param name="Ruling"/>

I have used XML as the result for clarity; you can adjust this to a text format as necessary.

Apologies Michael my knowledge is limited and therefore my explanations are somewhat confusing! I've tried what you said but it doesn't output the expected result, just strings of attribute values. I'm sure it's something I'm doing and not your answer! — Jimmy Sumpter, Apr 28 '15 at 14:19

XSL variables where element is null or doesn't exist

1 Answers1