xslt conditional increment

Question

I'm having problems incrementing a counter under certain conditions.

Input:

<Users>
  <User>
    <id>1</id>
    <username>jack</username>
  </User>
  <User>
    <id>2</id>
    <username>bob</username>
  </User>
  <User>
    <id>3</id>
    <username>bob</username>
  </User>
  <User>
    <id>4</id>
    <username>jack</username>
  </User>
</Users>

Wanted Output:

<Users>
  <User>
    <id>1</id>
    <username>jack01</username>
  </User>
  <User>
    <id>2</id>
    <username>bob01</username>
  </User>
  <User>
    <id>3</id>
    <username>bob02</username>
  </User>
  <User>
    <id>4</id>
    <username>jack02</username>
  </User>
</Users>

To accomplish this following algorithm can be used:

• sort input by username
• for each user
  • when previous username is equals current username
    • increment counter and
    • set username to '$username$counter'
  • otherwise
    • set counter to 1
• (sort by id again - not really necessary)

So i tried to transform this into XSLT:

  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
      xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />

  <xsl:template match="Users">
    <Users>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="create_user">
      <xsl:sort select="User/username"/>
    </xsl:apply-templates>
    </Users>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="create_user">
    <id><xsl:value-of select="id"/></id>
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="username=(preceding-sibling::User[1]//username)">
        <xsl:variable name="count">
          <xsl:number format="01"/>
        </xsl:variable>
        <username><xsl:value-of select="concat(username, $count)"/></username>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:variable name="count">
          <xsl:number value="1" format="01"/>
        </xsl:variable>
        <username><xsl:value-of select="concat(username, $count)"/></username>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>    

However, by executing this i get following errors:

• usernames do not sort
• counter does not increment
  • instead when condition matches counter will be the current node-position.
  • for our example the node with id = 3 would have the username = bob03
• the tag is missing

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

This transformation:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
  <xsl:copy>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="username/text()">
  <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  <xsl:value-of select=
  "format-number(count(../../preceding-sibling::*[username=current()])+1,
                '00')
  "/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on the provided XML document:

<Users>
    <User>
        <id>1</id>
        <username>jack</username>
    </User>
    <User>
        <id>2</id>
        <username>bob</username>
    </User>
    <User>
        <id>3</id>
        <username>bob</username>
    </User>
    <User>
        <id>4</id>
        <username>jack</username>
    </User>
</Users>

produces the wanted, correct result:

<Users>
   <User>
      <id>1</id>
      <username>jack01</username>
   </User>
   <User>
      <id>2</id>
      <username>bob01</username>
   </User>
   <User>
      <id>3</id>
      <username>bob02</username>
   </User>
   <User>
      <id>4</id>
      <username>jack02</username>
   </User>
</Users>

Answer 2

"Incrementing a counter" isn't what you do in a functional programming language. You need to describe the output you want as a function of the input (as Dimitre has done), rather than describing a process or procedure for computing the output.