Reordering Elements

Chapter 6 - We Want Results!
XSLT For Dummies
by Richard Wagner
Hungry Minds 2002

  

Reordering Elements

You can rearrange elements in the result document by recreating the element in the image of your choosing. For example, I can shuffle the children of the coffee element in the coffee-light.xml file by coding the following XSLT:

 <!-- coffee-reorder.xsl --> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <!-- Reorder elements --> <xsl:template match="coffee"> <coffee> <availability><xsl:apply-templates select="availability"/></availability> <price><xsl:apply-templates select="price"/></price> <bestwith><xsl:apply-templates select="bestwith"/></bestwith> <taste><xsl:apply-templates select="taste"/></taste> </coffee> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

By using a combination of literal text and xsl:apply-templates instructions, I recreate each child within a new sequential order. The result is shown here:

 <coffee> <availability>Year-round</availability> <price>11.99</price> <bestwith>Breakfast</bestwith> <taste>Curiously Mild And Bland</taste> </coffee> 

 Tip   Not all reordering needs to be manually done. You can also automatically sort elements using the xsl:sort instruction. I discuss sorting in Chapter 9.

    

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