XSLT sort by tag name and attribute value

Question

I\'m a noob with XSLT, so please excuse my ignorance... I\'m trying to sort a simple XML file by attribute value and tag name, but I struggle in accessing the value of the a

Answer 1

You can use multiple xsl:sort instructions, for example:

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

and since the default data-type is "text" and the default order is "ascending" this gives the desired output.

Edit

This is strange, because for the following XML:

<a>
    <b attribute="e" optionalAttr="fg"></b>
    <b attribute="b"></b>
    <d attribute="a"></d>
    <c></c>
</a>

and the XSL above, I get this result:

<a>
    <b attribute="b"></b>
    <b attribute="e" optionalAttr="fg"></b>
    <c></c>
    <d attribute="a"></d>
</a>

This includes the desired optional attribute but the order is different to the XML in the edited question (<c></c> is in a different position).

Answer 2

This XSLT 2.0 transformation performs sorting by element name and multiple attributes nameand value:

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
 xmlns:my="my:my">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

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

    <xsl:function name="my:attributeScore" as="xs:string">
      <xsl:param name="pThis" as="node()"/>

      <xsl:variable name="vScore">
          <xsl:for-each select="$pThis/@*">
           <xsl:sort select="name()"/>

           <xsl:value-of select="concat(name(),'+',.)"/>
          </xsl:for-each>
          <xsl:text>|</xsl:text>
      </xsl:variable>

      <xsl:sequence select="string-join($vScore, '')"/>
    </xsl:function>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on this XML document (the provided one, but added multiple attributes):

<a>
    <b attribute="e" x="y"></b>
    <b attribute="e" x="x"></b>
    <b attribute="b"></b>
    <d attribute="a"></d>
    <c></c>
</a>

the correctly sorted result is produced:

<a>
   <b attribute="b"/>
   <b attribute="e" x="x"/>
   <b attribute="e" x="y"/>
   <c/>
   <d attribute="a"/>
</a>

Answer 3

I just saw this question and as I'm new at xpath and XSL thought i'll give it a shot.

I seem to have come up with a completely different solution.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="* | @*">
            <xsl:sort select="not(@*)" order="ascending" data-type="number"/>
            <xsl:sort select="@*"/>
        </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*/@*">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()[not(string-length(normalize-space()))]"/>
<xsl:template match="*/text()[normalize-space()]">
    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space()"/>
</xsl:template>

It does depend on how you want the attributes to be order...

Sample 1:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<a>
    <b attribute="e" ></b>
    <b attribute="b" ></b>
    <c></c>
    <d attribute="a"></d>
</a>

Result 1

<a>
  <d attribute="a" />
  <b attribute="b" />
  <b attribute="e" />
  <c />
</a>

Sample 2

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<a>
    <b attribute="e" ></b>
    <b attribute="b" optionalAttr="fg"></b>
    <c></c>
    <d attribute="a"></d>
</a>

Result 2

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<a>
  <d attribute="a" />
  <b attribute="b" optionalAttr="fg" />
  <b attribute="e" />
  <c />
</a>

Just wondering if anyone could see anything wrong with this approach?

Thank you in advanced