Hi Garrett,

I completely understand how frustrating it is trying to do grouping in XSLT ... hopefully I can help?

The approach we are going to take is the "Muenchian Method".  Above the first <xsl:template> tag place the following:

<xsl:key name="responsibility" match="data[@alias='Responsibility']" use="text()" />

This will provide an index for the 'Responsibility' values - which we'll get on to next.

The following snippet will have a very ugly XPath statement, I'll try to explain it later...

<select>
    <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/descendant-or-self::node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'SolutionItem' and contains(data[@alias = 'Industry'], $industry)]/data[@alias='Responsibility' and count(. | key('responsibility', text())[1]) = 1]">
        <option>
            <xsl:value-of select="text()" />
        </option>
    </xsl:for-each>
</select>

... this should give you a dropdown list of the distinct values from the 'Responsibility' data items.

For a breakdown of the XPath statement... the first part:

$currentPage/descendant-or-self::node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'SolutionItem' and contains(data[@alias = 'Industry'], $industry)]

This gets all of the 'SolutionItem' nodes that contain the specified 'Industry' ... if you wanted to put that in a separate <xsl:variable> you could do, just to make your XPath a little shorter.

Next...

/data[@alias='Responsibility'

This specifies that you want to loop through the data items called 'Responsibility' ... and the second part...

 and count(. | key('responsibility', text())[1]) = 1]

... makes use of the index (that we included at the start).  The key performs a check to return a distinct node-set.

There is a more academic explanation to the "Muenchian Method", but it makes go cross-eyed - I just know that it works.

I can't guarantee that this is going to work first time for you, as I've never even seen your data - but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.

Good luck.

Cheers, Lee.

Hi Garrett,

don't know if this helps, but here goes. I had a similar problem a while ago. The 'Resource' node contains a number of 'Resource item' nodes which contain a property 'year'. Now the output on the Resource node should be a nicely formatted list of all Resource items underneath it, sorted by date descending and only displaying the date on the first item where it appears. 

So I grab all the child nodes:

<xsl:for-each select="node[@nodeTypeAlias='Resource item']">

   <xsl:sort select="data[@alias='year']" order="descending"/>

and then declare a new variable which holds the information if the current node in the for-each has a new year (aka different from the previous sibling):

   <xsl:variable name="isNewYear" select="position() != 1 and data[@alias='year'] != preceding-sibling::node/data[@alias='year']" />

Obviously position 1 will always need outputting.

Hope this is what you're looking for or at least gets you going in the right direction. :)

Sascha

Hi,

A sincere thanks to both of yuo for your speedy and diligent replies.  However, I am sorry to say that neither solution is working.

Lee,  using your <xsl:key> code, I am getting a similar result as when using [data [@alias = 'Responsibility'][not(.=following::data [@alias = 'Responsibility'])]].  Meaning I am getting More results But there are entries missing (???).  I can tell this because when I take out the uniqueness-filter attempts, I get instances of the Responsibility column that do not show up when I put the filter In.  They just appear in multiple. 

Sascha, using your code I am simply getting every instance of the data [@alias = 'Responsibility'] column, I believe because I don't think the value of xsl:variable can be changed once it is declared, so it returns true the first time and then and stays true so it writes out every row.

Lee-- I am doing a direct query on the database using what I BELIEVE to be the SQL equivalent to what we're trying to do here:

SELECT responsibility FROM `ignite_solutions`.`solutions` WHERE industry LIKE '%Retail%'
GROUP BY responsibility
ORDER BY responsibility

And I am getting all matching Responsibility entries.  However, using the Muenchian method, I am missing ONE.  Any ideas on what I might be able to furnish you with to maybe take a deeper look at it?  Here now is my complete code as I have it now:

<xsl:key name="distinct-responsibility" match="data[@alias='Responsibility']" use="text()" />
<xsl:template match="/">

<select id="responsibility" name="responsibility" type="text" class="responsibilityText" onchange="resetChallenge();document.forms['find-solution'].submit();return false;">
     <option value="">My Responsibility &gt;</option>
 <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/descendant-or-self::node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'SolutionItem' and contains(data[@alias = 'Industry'], $industry)]/data[@alias='Responsibility' and count(. | key('distinct-responsibility', text())[1]) = 1]">
        <xsl:sort select="data [@alias = 'Responsibility']" order="ascending" />
     <option value="{data [@alias = 'Responsibility']}">
        <xsl:value-of select="text()" />
     </option>
 </xsl:for-each>
</select>

Any more help you could offer would be sincerely appreciated.  I've now been stuck on this for a full work day!

Earnestly,

Garrett

Hi Garrett,

sorry that none of this seems to help. As to the xsl:variable being changed: the only exception is inside of a for-each loop where it gets updated with each iteration (see http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/xsltc/xsl_variable_design.html). Oddly it seems to be working for me, unfortunately can't show you the site as it's for a client.

However you don't have to declare a variable, this should work as well:

<xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/descendant-or-self::node/node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'SolutionItem' and contains(data[@alias = 'Industry'], $industry)]">

<xsl:sort select="data [@alias = 'Responsibility']" order="ascending" />                  

     <xsl:if test="position() = 1 or data[@alias='Responsibility'] != preceding-sibling::node/data[@alias='Responsibility']">

.....

Hello again, Sascha.   And thanks.  But no, this just isn't working.  I'm getting:

Corporate Communications
Corporate Communications
Corporate Communications
Creative Development
Creative Development
General Management
General Management
General Management
Human Resources
Human Resources
Human Resources

Etc.  It's a weird one for sure.  For now I'm going with the one that just misses one and I'll keep looking closely at the data.

//Garrett

Hi Garrett, (I'd been away over the weekend - hence no reply from me)

Which data-type are you using for the "Responsibility" field? Is it a standard textbox, or have you set-up a custom drop-down list?

If you are using a custom drop-down list, then you can use PreValues to pull out all of values.

Using a standard textbox field, then its either battle with the XSLT distinct/grouping ... or like you've done, write a direct SQL query?

If you do want to go ahead with the XSLT distinct/grouping, then it might be worth posting a snippet of your XML content (from your /data/umbraco.config), so we can see the structure of the data we are dealing with - in terms of the nodeTypeAlias and Industry field, etc. (Gives me something to test against).

Cheers, Lee.

Hi Lee.  Thanks for your continued attention.  Hope you had a great weekend away.

How do I print out the entire XML document I'm transforming?

//Garrett

<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:copy-of select="." />
</xsl:template>

This is from memory, so I hope it works!

/Steen

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