[xsl] Re: A few questions to the experts: functions, templates, loops

[Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev at yahoo dot com>]

> I am having some trouble with XML/XSLT, and it would be very nice if
> someone could help me with a few questions:
> 
> I have created a homepage-generation/management-xslt script using the
> data from a xml-database, of course, and saxon. I managed to get
> everything running up until now, but there are some things that I
> would
> really like to improve in my script:
> 1.) How do I write my own functions with return values? For example,
> I
> have a function that traverses the tree, searches a page by id and
> delivers the corresponding path-name. My solution up until now has
> been
> to create a template (please, don't laugh at me - I know this is most
> probably the worst possible approach) which delivers the name as
> text.
> This works, but... it's sort of.. akward

The way to implement a function in XSLT is to instantiate a template
within the body of an xsl:variable, then if necessary (whenever the
result is an RTF) convert the resulting RTF to a regular node-set,
osing the vendor:node-set() extension function.

More on implementation of functions in XSLT 1.0 and especially on
higher-order functions and treating functions as first class objects
can be found at the home page of FXSL -- the functional programming
library for XSLT 1,0:

http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/

It contains links to four articles, explaining the main ideas standing
in the base of FXSL, and also to the downloadable files of FXSL.





=====
Cheers,

Dimitre Novatchev.
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL

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