xsl:sort an XML file using multiple elements

Question

I'm trying to sort a bunch of records in an XML file. The trick is that I need to sort using different elements for different nodes. To give a simplest example, I want to do this: given an xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<buddies>

<person>
<nick>Jim</nick>
<last>Zulkin</last>
</person>

<person>
<first>Joe</first>
<last>Bumpkin</last>
</person>

<person>
<nick>Pumpkin</nick>
</person>

<person>
<nick>Andy</nick>
</person>

</buddies>

I want to convert it to

Andy
Joe Bumpkin
Pumpkin
Jim Zulkin

That is, a person may be listed by any subset of the first name, last name and a nick. The sorting key is the last name if it's present, otherwise it's the nickname if it's present and a firstname otherwise.

I'm having difficulties here since using of variables as xsl:sort keys is apparently not allowed.

My current best shot is to have a two-step transformation: Add a special tag to each record using this stylesheet

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="no" indent="yes"/>

<!-- *** convert each person record into a person2 record w/ the sorting key *** -->
<xsl:template match="/buddies">
    <buddies>
    <xsl:for-each select="person">
     <person2>
        <xsl:copy-of select="*"/>
        <!-- add the sort-by tag -->
        <sort-by>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="last"> <xsl:value-of select="last"/>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:choose>
                    <xsl:when test="nick"> <xsl:value-of select="nick"/> </xsl:when>
                    <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:value-of select="first"/> </xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </sort-by>
  </person2>
</xsl:for-each>
</buddies>

And then sort the resulting xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/buddies">
    <xsl:apply-templates>
        <xsl:sort select="sort-by"/>
    </xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="person2">
   <xsl:value-of select="first"/>
   <xsl:value-of select="nick"/>
   <xsl:value-of select="last"/><xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>

While this two-step transform works, I'm wondering if there is more elegant way of doing it in just one go?

Answer 1

You can use the concat XPath function:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="text"/>
    <xsl:template match="/buddies">
        <xsl:apply-templates>
            <xsl:sort select="concat(last,nick,first)"/>
        </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="person">
        <xsl:value-of select="concat(normalize-space(concat(first,
                                                            ' ',
                                                            nick,
                                                            ' ',
                                                            last)),
                                     '&#xA;')"/>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 2

Can you try if this template gives the expected result? For your simple example it gives the correct answer but there might be corner cases that won't work. Normalize-space is used here to remove leading and trailing spaces if one of the elements is missing.

<xsl:template match="/buddies">
    <xsl:for-each select="person">
        <xsl:sort select="normalize-space(concat(last, ' ', nick, ' ', first))"/>

        <xsl:if test="first">
            <xsl:value-of select="first" />
            <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
        </xsl:if>

        <xsl:if test="nick">
            <xsl:value-of select="nick" />
            <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
        </xsl:if>

        <xsl:value-of select="last" />
        <xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>