Hi Craig,

Yeah, it's not the simplest thing in the world, but here's a starter to get you going:

<xsl:param name="currentPage" />

<!-- Index documents by their year+month combination -->
<xsl:key name="documentsByMonth" match="*[@isDoc]" use="substring(@updateDate, 1, 7)" />

<!-- Grab news from somewhere -->
<xsl:variable name="news" select="$currentPage/*[@isDoc]" />

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:for-each select="$news/*[@isDoc][count(. | key('documentsByMonth', substring(@updateDate, 1, 7))[1]) = 1]">
        <xsl:sort select="@updateDate" data-type="text" order="descending" />

        <!-- Render stuff for "group" only (e.g., a header or similar) -->
        <xsl:apply-templates select="." mode="group" />

        <!-- Render items in group -->
        <xsl:apply-templates select="key('documentsByMonth', substring(@updateDate, 1, 7))" mode="item">
            <xsl:sort select="@updateDate" data-type="text" order="descending" />
        </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*[@isDoc]" mode="group">
    <!-- Output for header -->
    <xsl:value-of select="substring(@updateDate, 1, 7)" />: <xsl:text />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*[@isDoc]" mode="item">
    <!-- Output for a single item -->
    <xsl:value-of select="@nodeName" />, <xsl:text />
</xsl:template>

If all your "news" nodes have the same document type alias, you can substitute *[@isDoc] for that document type alias (everywhere) to optimize the thing (probably only noticable with huge sets of nodes, though).

Hope that helps,

/Chriztian

Hi Chriztian,

Thanks for that but I'm not getting any output whatsoever! (no errors either though!).

The nodetype is NewsItem and this is an image of my content tree

Thanks again

Hi, here's my full XSLT (which is basically what you've pointed me to with a couple of amendments)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [ <!ENTITY nbsp "&#x00A0;"> ]>
<xsl:stylesheet 
    version="1.0" 
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
    xmlns:msxml="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
    xmlns:umbraco.library="urn:umbraco.library" xmlns:Exslt.ExsltCommon="urn:Exslt.ExsltCommon" xmlns:Exslt.ExsltDatesAndTimes="urn:Exslt.ExsltDatesAndTimes" xmlns:Exslt.ExsltMath="urn:Exslt.ExsltMath" xmlns:Exslt.ExsltRegularExpressions="urn:Exslt.ExsltRegularExpressions" xmlns:Exslt.ExsltStrings="urn:Exslt.ExsltStrings" xmlns:Exslt.ExsltSets="urn:Exslt.ExsltSets" xmlns:Examine="urn:Examine" 
    exclude-result-prefixes="msxml umbraco.library Exslt.ExsltCommon Exslt.ExsltDatesAndTimes Exslt.ExsltMath Exslt.ExsltRegularExpressions Exslt.ExsltStrings Exslt.ExsltSets Examine ">


<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

<xsl:param name="currentPage" />

<!-- Index documents by their year+month combination -->
<xsl:key name="documentsByMonth" match="*[@isDoc]" use="substring(@updateDate, 1, 7)" />

<!-- Grab news from somewhere -->
<xsl:variable name="news" select="$currentPage/*[@isDoc]" />

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:for-each select="$news/*[@isDoc][count(. | key('documentsByMonth', substring(@updateDate, 1, 7))[1]) = 1]">
        <xsl:sort select="@updateDate" data-type="text" order="descending" />

        <!-- Render stuff for "group" only (e.g., a header or similar) -->
        <xsl:apply-templates select="." mode="group" />

        <!-- Render items in group -->
        <xsl:apply-templates select="key('documentsByMonth', substring(@updateDate, 1, 7))" mode="item">
            <xsl:sort select="@updateDate" data-type="text" order="descending" />
        </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*[@isDoc]" mode="group">
    <!-- Output for header -->
    <xsl:value-of select="substring(@updateDate, 1, 7)" />: <xsl:text />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*[@isDoc]" mode="item">
    <!-- Output for a single item -->
    <xsl:value-of select="@nodeName" />, <xsl:text />
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

I just spotted an error right away:

In the for-each, remove the /*[@isDoc] from the select, as it tries to get all nodes that are children of the news items. It should look like this:

<xsl:for-each select="$news[count( ...

/Chriztian

Done that mate but still nothing :(

I don't believe you - it should work! :-)

Kidding aside - one reason could be that it's not running as a macro on the "News Repository" node?

The $news variable selects all the children of $currentPage, which forces it to only work on the repository node - if you need it to work from everywere, you need to do something like this:

<xsl:param name="currentPage" />

<xsl:variable name="siteRoot" select="$currentPage/ancestor-or-self::*[@level = 1]" />

<xsl:variable name="newsRepository" select="$siteRoot/PATH-TO-NEWS_REPOSITORY" />
<xsl:variable name="news" select="$newsRepository/NewsItem" />

/Chriztian

Hi Mate (Sorry for the trouble!) but still not getting any output.

Here's a picture of my content tree showing the NewsRepository and the NewsItems (it's the NewsItem's that I'm trying to get a unique list of published/updated dates.

thanks again

Oooh think we might be getting somewhere.....

I think that you've nailed it matey :) Now I just gotta convert the month year to full month and year and it's all happy days!

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