When trying to use For-Each, it breaks the format-number and displays NaN in xslt 1.0

Question

I am working on an XSLT version 1.0 (apologies, I know 2.0 is much better!) and thanks to this brilliant community actually got somewhere. I am now stuck again. I am trying to convert this raw and less than attractive XML to a .csv:

<transmissions>
  <ES_TRANSMISSION>
    <tx_txblocks>
      <ES_TXBLOCK>
        <txb_announcedtime>
          <ESP_TIMEDURATION time="25:00:00.000" tvdayhours="25" hours="1" minutes="00" />
        </txb_announcedtime>
        <duration>
          <ESP_TIMEDURATION duration="50:00.000" />
        </duration>
        <product>
          <ES_PRODUCT p_product_calculatedbroadcasttitle="4" />
        </product>
      </ES_TXBLOCK>
    </tx_txblocks>
    <tx_date>
      <ESP_DATE date="2019-10-12" dateindays="43383" day="12" dayname="Saturday" month="10" monthname="October" productionweeknumber="41" weekNumberYear="2019" weekdaynumber="6" weeknumber="41" year="2019" />
    </tx_date>
    <tx_duration>
      <ESP_TIMEDURATION duration="50:00.000" hours="0" minutes="50" />
    </tx_duration>
    <tx_channel>
      <ESP_CHANNEL name="Channel A">
        <popupLookups />
      </ESP_CHANNEL>
    </tx_channel>
  </ES_TRANSMISSION>
  <ES_TRANSMISSION>
    <tx_txblocks>
      <ES_TXBLOCK>
        <txb_announcedtime>
          <ESP_TIMEDURATION time="25:50:00.000" tvdayhours="25" hours="1" minutes="50" />
        </txb_announcedtime>
        <duration>
          <ESP_TIMEDURATION duration="45:00.000" />
        </duration>
        <product>
          <ES_PRODUCT p_product_calculatedbroadcasttitle="5" />
        </product>
      </ES_TXBLOCK>
    </tx_txblocks>
    <tx_date>
      <ESP_DATE date="2019-10-12" dateindays="43383" day="12" dayname="Saturday" month="10" monthname="October" productionweeknumber="41" weekNumberYear="2019" weekdaynumber="6" weeknumber="41" year="2019" />
    </tx_date>
    <tx_duration>
      <ESP_TIMEDURATION duration="45:00.000" hours="0" minutes="45" />
    </tx_duration>
    <tx_channel>
      <ESP_CHANNEL name="Channel A">
        <popupLookups />
      </ESP_CHANNEL>
    </tx_channel>
  </ES_TRANSMISSION>
</transmissions>

The third party has some requirements on the .csv, such as always needing two numbers (sorted) and loads of commas because....why not!

But every time I try a for-each to get it to report on more than the first item on the list it comes back with NaN. Below is the XSLT I have built (apologies for it being so basic) that works, but only takes the first item into consideration. I have tried various <xsl:for-each> for it, but every time it breaks it.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt">
  <xsl:output encoding="utf-8" method="text" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_date/ESP_DATE/@day, '00')"/> 
    <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_date/ESP_DATE/@month, '00')"/>
    <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_date/ESP_DATE/@year"/>
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_txblocks/ES_TXBLOCK/txb_announcedtime/ESP_TIMEDURATION/@hours, '00')"/>
    <xsl:text>:</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_txblocks/ES_TXBLOCK/txb_announcedtime/ESP_TIMEDURATION/@minutes"/>
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_duration/ESP_TIMEDURATION/@hours, '00')"/><xsl:text>:</xsl:text> 
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_duration/ESP_TIMEDURATION/@minutes, '00')"/>
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="translate(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_txblocks/ES_TXBLOCK/product/ES_PRODUCT/@p_product_calculatedbroadcasttitle, '.,', '')"/>
    <xsl:text>,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:text>TEST</xsl:text>
    <xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ESP_DATE" mode="full">
    <xsl:value-of select="@day"/>
    <xsl:text>00</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ESP_DATE" mode="full">
    <xsl:text>00</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="@month"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ESP_TIMEDURATION" mode="full">
    <xsl:text>00</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="@hour"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match ="ES_TRANSMISSION"/>
  <xsl:template match="ES_PRODUCT" mode="full"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Any hints or guidance would be greatly appreciated. And then I will leave you all alone for a bit while I try to talk people I work with to use 2.0 because I have this massive reference book that I know would be extremely handy!

Thanks @Tomalak, I will remember that for next time to ensure it looks the part. — Anne S, Nov 19 '19 at 17:27
Here is a handy XML formatter that can bring messy XML (and other stuff) into shape: https://www.freeformatter.com/xsl-transformer.html. For testing XSLT you can use [XSLT Fiddle](https://xsltfiddle.liberty-development.net/). — Tomalak, Nov 19 '19 at 17:28
Also I strongly recommend using `yyyy-mm-dd` as the only date pattern. Your `dd/mm/yyyy` is an ambiguous format and should not be used to store dates. The `` element already has the right format, you could use this straight-away instead of putting effort into creating an inferior date representation. — Tomalak, Nov 19 '19 at 17:38
Hi Tomalak, Thank you for the link, that is being saved as a new favourite. On the second comment, unfortunately it is a requirement for a 3rd party to have it in the dd/mm/yyyy format, although like you I feel that the proper way of having the date pattern is better. — Anne S, Nov 20 '19 at 09:23

Tomalak · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-19T17:56:53.380

You are looking for something like this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="text" encoding="utf-8" />

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION" />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ES_TRANSMISSION">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="tx_date/ESP_DATE" mode="csv" />
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="tx_txblocks/ES_TXBLOCK/txb_announcedtime/ESP_TIMEDURATION" mode="csv" />
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="tx_duration/ESP_TIMEDURATION" mode="csv" />
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="translate(tx_txblocks/ES_TXBLOCK/product/ES_PRODUCT/@p_product_calculatedbroadcasttitle, '.,', '')"/>
    <xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ESP_DATE" mode="csv">
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(@day, '00')"/> 
    <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(@month, '00')"/>
    <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="@year"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="ESP_TIMEDURATION" mode="csv">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="@tvdayhours">
        <xsl:value-of select="format-number(@tvdayhours, '00')" />
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>00</xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
    <xsl:text>:</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(@hours, '00')" />
    <xsl:text>:</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="format-number(@minutes, '00')"/>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

which outputs this CSV from your sample data:

12/10/2019,25:01:00,00:00:50,4
12/10/2019,25:01:50,00:00:45,5

Note that it starts with an <xsl:apply-templates> (see how <xsl:apply-templates> works) and then it re-uses the ESP_TIMEDURATION template twice to output the same format for the two duration values.

Note that I keep using <xsl:apply-templates>, I can only recommend to get into this habit.

You can add an <xsl:text>...</xsl:text> with a header row in the / template.

Your attempt fails because it does not contain any iteration:

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_date/ESP_DATE/@day, '00')"/> 
  <!-- ... --->
</xsl:template>

The / template matches exactly once, at the root of the input XML.
<xsl:value-of select="..." /> outputs the value of the expression.
The XPath transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_date/ESP_DATE/@day selects all matching @day attributes from all transmissions.
format-number(...) can only format one item, but in this situation it gets more than one. It takes the first of those items and formats it.
This happens to all the other outputs in that template.
The / template ends after processing effectively only the data from the first transmission.

Using a separate template and <xsl:apply-templates> solves this situation (plus all XPaths become shorter).

michael.hor257k · Answer 2 · 2019-11-19T17:58:42.270

In order to create a .csv, you need a template that will generate a row for every element in the XSLT that represents a record (I'll assume it's ES_TRANSMISSION in your example).

This template can be a stand-alone xsl:template instruction (as shown in the answer given by Tomalak) or it can be contained in an xsl:for each instruction.

every time I try a for-each to get it to report on more than the first item on the list it comes back with NaN.

The important thing to remember is that both xsl:template and xsl:for each establish the context for the instructions and expressions contained in them.

An instruction like:

<xsl:value-of select="format-number(transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION/tx_date/ESP_DATE/@day, '00')"/>

that works from the context of:

<xsl:template match="/">

must be changed to:

<xsl:value-of select="format-number(tx_date/ESP_DATE/@day, '00')"/>

in order to work from the context of:

<xsl:for-each select="transmissions/ES_TRANSMISSION">

Thank you so much for this, seeing it broken down makes me understand it completely. — Anne S, Nov 20 '19 at 09:24

When trying to use For-Each, it breaks the format-number and displays NaN in xslt 1.0

2 Answers2