[RESOLVED] XML remove duplicates

[MadCatVB]

Hi all,

I've only recently started using XML with XSL and i've got what hopefully should be an easy question.

I have a dataset in my asp.net application which contains a table of data.

The data consists of Owners, a number of possible job status' and the number of jobs at the given status.

The output in SQL looks like so:

Owner, Status, Total
Bob, Unknown, 2
Bob, Known, 4
Bob, Verified, 1
Fred, Known, 3
Fred, Verified, 3
.....

and so on. The grouping is on the employee and then the status and a count is calculated.

I have an XSL template that i want to use to display this data. the part i'm interested in looks:

        <TABLE>
          <COLGROUP WIDTH="130" ALIGN="LEFT"></COLGROUP>
          <COLGROUP WIDTH="100" ALIGN="LEFT"></COLGROUP>
          <COLGROUP WIDTH="100" ALIGN="LEFT"></COLGROUP>
          <TR>
			<TD CLASS="HDR">Owner</TD>
			<TD CLASS="HDR">Status</TD>
			<TD CLASS="HDR">Total</TD>
          </TR>
          <xsl:for-each select="IssuesByStatus/Table1">
            <TR>
			<TD><xsl:value-of select="Owner"/></TD>
				<TD><xsl:value-of select="Status"/></TD>
              <TD><xsl:value-of select="Total"/></TD>
            </TR>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </TABLE>

The problem I'm having is that the output repeats the Owner for each status. as shown in the example above. I'd like to be able (using XSL if possible) to only show the Owner name once for each group of status'.

Is this possible and if so how would i go about doing that.

Many thanks in advance

Grant

[CornedBee]

XSL transforms XML, not comma-separated data like your SQL output. You need to generate XML if you want to use XSL to transform it.

[MadCatVB]

Sorry, perhaps I should have explained better. In my code I have a section that converts my dataset to an XML data document. Its this that I want to perform the transformation on.

I can get the above code working and it outputs to a file, however it has the Owner name repeated on every row of data.

Thanks

Grant

[CornedBee]

So what you effectively want is grouping?

[MadCatVB]

That sounds about right. Having only just touched the subject of XSL, i'm not sure of the process around grouping. Have you any examples of how to group in XSL or links to pages that might.

Thanks for your help.

[CornedBee]

Try this (requires the entries to be sorted by Owner):

        <TABLE>
          <COLGROUP WIDTH="130" ALIGN="LEFT"></COLGROUP>
          <COLGROUP WIDTH="100" ALIGN="LEFT"></COLGROUP>
          <COLGROUP WIDTH="100" ALIGN="LEFT"></COLGROUP>
          <TR>
			<TD CLASS="HDR">Owner</TD>
			<TD CLASS="HDR">Status</TD>
			<TD CLASS="HDR">Total</TD>
          </TR>
          <xsl:for-each select="IssuesByStatus/Table1">
            <TR>
                        <xsl:variable name="pos" select="position()"/>
			<TD><xsl:if test="string(Owner) != string(../Table1[$pos-1]/Owner)"><xsl:value-of select="Owner"/></xsl:if></TD>
				<TD><xsl:value-of select="Status"/></TD>
              <TD><xsl:value-of select="Total"/></TD>
            </TR>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </TABLE>

[MadCatVB]

Hi again,

I think i see what you're trying to do here but i'm getting an error when running it.

"The variable or param 'pos-1' is either not defined or it is out of scope."

Not sure why this is the case, any ideas?

Thanks for your help.

[CornedBee]

Because - is a valid character for variable names in XSLT. Put a space on each side of the -.

[MadCatVB]

Sorry,

Found out what was causing the problem. I've changed to the code to as below

<xsl:for-each select="IssuesByStatus/Table1">
          <TR>
		  <xsl:variable name="pos" select="position()"/>		  
		  <td>
		  <xsl:if test="$pos = 1"><xsl:value-of select="Owner"/></xsl:if>
		  <xsl:if test="$pos > 1"><xsl:if test="string(Owner) != string(../Table1[$pos - 1]/Owner)"><xsl:value-of select="Owner"/></xsl:if></xsl:if>
		  </td>
		  <TD><xsl:value-of select="Status"/></TD>
          <TD><xsl:value-of select="Total"/></TD>
          </TR>
          </xsl:for-each>

and that does the job. Thanks for all your help.

Grant

[MadCatVB]

Just noted your reply as i posted what i found to work. I've taken out the first <xsl:if> clause as it doesn't do anything.

I appreciate your time on this matter. It makes much more sense now.