XML/XSLT nested loop of attributes to produce HTML table - html

Question

I am trying to produce a HTML table from some XML I have got through a SQL query. The XML produced looks like the following:
<root>
<form attribute1="1" attribute2="1" />
<form attribute1="1" attribute2="2" />
<form attribute1="1" attribute2="3" />
<form attribute1="2" attribute2="1" />
<form attribute1="2" attribute2="2" />
<form attribute1="3" attribute2="1" />
</root>
The table I am trying to produce needs to have a header row for each unique attribute1 with rows underneath for each attribute2, something like this:
<attribute1="1" />
<attribute2="1" />
<attribute2="2" />
<attribute2="3" />
<attribute1="2" />
<attribute2="1" />
<attribute2="2" />
<attribute1="3" />
<attribute2="1" />
I don't have much experience using XML/XSLT but I am hoping it would be possible to do something like loop through the forms, create a header row for each unique attribute1 then create data rows associated to the unique attribute1 underneath.

Answer 1

If you can only use XSLT 1.0, try this XSLT for starters, which uses the Muenchian Grouping method
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />
<xsl:key name="form" match="form" use="#attribute1" />
<xsl:template match="root">
<xsl:copy>
<!-- Get first "form" element that occurs in each group -->
<xsl:for-each select="form[generate-id() = generate-id(key('form',#attribute1)[1])]">
<group>
<header><xsl:value-of select="#attribute1" /></header>
<!-- Get the "form" elements that make up the group -->
<xsl:apply-templates select="key('form', #attribute1)" />
</group>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="form">
<row><xsl:value-of select="#attribute2" /></row>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
And here's some XSLT that can create an HTML table. This one is slightly more advanced as it works out the maximum number of columns for a row, and uses that in creating colspan attributes for the shorter rows
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="html" doctype-public="XSLT-compat" omit-xml-declaration="yes" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />
<xsl:key name="form" match="form" use="#attribute1" />
<xsl:variable name="maxCells">
<xsl:for-each select="/root/form[generate-id() = generate-id(key('form',#attribute1)[1])]">
<xsl:sort select="count(key('form', #attribute1))" order="descending" />
<xsl:if test="position() = 1">
<xsl:value-of select="count(key('form', #attribute1))" />
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:template match="root">
<table border="1">
<!-- Get first "form" element that occurs in each group -->
<xsl:for-each select="form[generate-id() = generate-id(key('form',#attribute1)[1])]">
<tr>
<th colspan="{$maxCells}">
<xsl:value-of select="#attribute1" />
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<!-- Get the "form" elements that make up the group -->
<xsl:apply-templates select="key('form', #attribute1)" />
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="form">
<td>
<xsl:if test="position() = last()">
<xsl:attribute name="colspan">
<xsl:value-of select="$maxCells - count(key('form', #attribute1)) + 1" />
</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:value-of select="#attribute2" />
</td>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>