<xsl:for-the-first-three-or-so select="item">?

[Drulli Rokk]

Hi,

Here's a question that has cost this newbie two days of headache already:
How can I get my XSLT stylesheet to specify a maximum number of elements to
process?

I'm now using <xsl:for-each> which processes all the child-nodes at the
particuar point in my XML (RSS) file. But what I really want, is this:

if number of child-nodes > n then process only the first n
else process all of them.

If anyone can point me to the general direction in which to look, or what
words to enter into google, I will be much obliged.


The part of the XML in question looks like this

<rss>
<channel>
<item>...</item>
<item>...</item>
<item>...</item>
<item>...</item>

 

[Mike Brown]

if number of child-nodes > n then process only the first n
else process all of them.
[...]
The part of the XML in question looks like this

<rss>
<channel>
<item>...</item>
<item>...</item>
<item>...</item>
<item>...</item>
.
.
.
<item>...</item>
</channel>
</rss>

and the XSLT currently handling them contains this:
<xsl:template match="rss/channel">

No need for the "rss/" here, unless you have channel elements that are
children of other nodes. A match pattern is not identifying nodes to go
process; it is identifying which nodes, if they happen to be selected for
processing, should be processed with this template.

<xsl:for-each select="item">
...
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

Just change the select in the xsl:for-each from "item" to "item[position()
&lt; 10]", if you want to process the first 9 (if there are less than 9,
it'll process all of them)

 

[Drulli Rokk]

Thank you. Not only does this work, I understand it as well!

Just change the select in the xsl:for-each from "item" to
"item[position()
&lt; 10]", if you want to process the first 9 (if there are less than 9,
it'll process all of them)

 

[David Andriana]

<xsl:for-each select="item">
...
</xsl:for-each>

<xsl:for-each select="item[position() &lt;= 3]">
...
</xsl:for-each>