Creating semantic tables with rowspan via xslt - html

Question

I have following xml document:
...
<x>
<symptom><descr></descr></symptom>
<cause></cause>
<solution></solution>
<cause></cause>
<solution></solution>
</x>
...
In my document I have several <x>
In each <x> I have only one <symptom> and n <cause> and <solution> whereby the amount of <cause> and <solution> is always the same.
I want to get following autmatically generated structure:
<table>
<tr>
<td rowspan=count(cause)><xsl:value-of select="symptom/descr"></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="cause"></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="symptom"></td>
<tr>
<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select="cause"></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="symptom"></td>
<tr>
...
</table>
I tried following code, which I know is totally wrong. But I'm stuck since several hours and couldn't find any good solution on the internet.
<xsl:for-each select="cause">
<tr>
<td rowspan="count(.)">
<xsl:value-of select="../descr[1]"/>
</td>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</td>
<xsl:for-each select="../solution">
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</td>
</xsl:for-each>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>

Answer 1

You're on the right lines with one tr per cause, how about this:
<xsl:template match="x">
<table>
<xsl:for-each select="cause">
<!-- the index of this cause within the list of causes in the current x -->
<xsl:variable name="pos" select="position()" />
<tr>
<!-- first cause - create the spanning symptom cell -->
<xsl:if test="$pos = 1">
<td rowspan="{last()}"><xsl:value-of select="../symptom/descr"/></td>
</xsl:if>
<!-- this cause -->
<td><xsl:value-of select="." /></td>
<!-- the matching solution -->
<td><xsl:value-of select="../solution[$pos]" /></td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:template>
A trick here is the last() function, which returns the total number of nodes that the current for-each (or apply-templates) is processing, which in this case is precisely the number of rows you want to span.

Answer 2

This is based on the assumption that you want as result a table with following structure: Given an example input XML
<x>
<symptom>
<descr>
Description
</descr>
</symptom>
<cause>
Cause 1
</cause>
<solution>
Solution 1
</solution>
<cause>
Cause 2
</cause>
<solution>
Solution 2
</solution>
</x>
I assume you want following table:
<table>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">Description</td>
<td>Cause 1</td>
<td>Solution 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cause 2</td>
<td>Solution 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
This could be done with following XSLT:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:transform xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<xsl:template match="x">
<table>
<xsl:for-each select="cause">
<xsl:apply-templates select="." mode="row">
<xsl:with-param name="amount" select="count(../cause)"/>
<xsl:with-param name="position" select="position()"/>
</xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="cause" mode="row">
<xsl:param name="amount"/>
<xsl:param name="position"/>
<tr>
<xsl:if test="$position = 1">
<td rowspan="{$amount}">
<xsl:value-of select="//symptom/descr"/>
</td>
</xsl:if>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</td>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="following-sibling::solution"/>
</td>
</tr>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:transform>
For each cause a row is created by applying the template
<xsl:template match="cause" mode="row">
with the amount of rows and the the position of the current cause as parameters. If the position is 1, the description is written as value in a td with the amount of cause as value of rowspan.
Each row contains the value of the current cause:
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</td>
and the value of the solution at the same position (the solution which is the following-sibling of the current cause):
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="following-sibling::solution"/>
</td>