how to make a variable global in xslt?

Question

Hi,

I have a variable 'sortedKeywords' its value is '1#5#13-14#9-10-11#7#3'. While looping (and when a particular condition is met ) I want the first number followed by '#' to be removed from the variable.

XML:

<root>
    <kwd-group>
        <title>Keywords</title>
            <u>ddd</u>
        <kwd>ZBustard</kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Grassland conservation</kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Tonle Sap</kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Irrigated rice</kwd>
        <kwd><it>bss</it></kwd>
        <kwd><it>ggggbss</it></kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Habitat conversion</kwd>
        <kwd><b>bold</b></kwd>
            <u>.</u>
    </kwd-group>
</root>

DESIRED-XML:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root>
    <kwd-group>
        <title>Keywords</title>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Grassland conservation</kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Habitat conversion</kwd>
        <kwd><b>bold</b></kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Irrigated rice</kwd>
        <kwd><it>bss</it></kwd>
        <kwd><it>ggggbss</it></kwd>
            <u>, </u>
        <kwd>Tonle Sap</kwd>
            <u>ddd</u>
        <kwd>ZBustard</kwd>
            <u>.</u>
    </kwd-group>
</root>

XSLT:

    <xsl:variable name="sortedKeywords" select="1#5#13-14#9-10-11#7#3"/>
      <xsl:for-each select="text">
         <xsl:choose>
           <xsl:when test="kwd and (../text/u or ../text/st)">
               <xsl:variable name="pos" select="replace($sortedKeywords,'^([0-9]+)#.*?$','$1')"/>
***** Line 6  ******   <xsl:variable name="sortedKeywords" select="replace($sortedKeywords,'^[0-9]+#(.*?)$','$2')"/>
              <xsl:copy-of select="../text[position()=number($pos)]"/>
           </xsl:when>
           <xsl:otherwise>
               <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
           </xsl:otherwise>
         </xsl:choose>
      </xsl:for-each>

Line 6 alters the variable 'sortedKeywords'. But its not really changing.

Answer 1

Since the variable cannot be made global, i used the below approach to sort which had the challenge of sorting tags whose values are not actually inside a single tag.

XSLT-SOLUTION::

<xsl:template match="*|@*|comment()|processing-instruction()|text()">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="*|@*|comment()|processing-instruction()|text()"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="kwd-group">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="title"/>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="kwd[preceding-sibling::*[1][self::u]]">
      <xsl:sort select="string(.)" />            
    </xsl:apply-templates>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="u[last()]"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="kwd[preceding-sibling::*[1][self::u]]">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="preceding-sibling::*[1][self::u]"/>
  <xsl:copy><xsl:apply-templates/></xsl:copy>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="following-sibling::kwd[not(preceding-sibling::*[1][self::u]) and preceding-sibling::u[1][following-sibling::*[1][self::kwd]=current()]]"/>
</xsl:template>



</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 2

OK, I still don't really understand the logic of what you are trying to achieve, but I can certainly see what you are doing wrong; variables in a functional language like XSLT aren't mutable, and you can't treat a for-each instruction in the same way as a procedural loop.

Unless there's some other algorithm for achieving what you want to achieve, you need to use recursion: write a template that processes one "text" element, and then calls itself to process the rest of the "text" elements, passing the new value of sortedKeywords as a parameter.