The hardest part of XSLT is getting the xpath to return what you want.

This page may help you understand why you're getting what you are, and how to get what you want. http://umbraco.org/documentation/books/xslt-basics/xpath-axes-and-their-shortcuts

Otherwise, give us a sense of your content tree structure so we can help more specifically.

cheers,
doug.

I see two things right away:

1. You're using the descendant:: axis (//) where you should probably use the child:: axis (/) a couple of places
2. When using preceding-sibling:: (and following-sibling::) you tend to think of the single node before or after, but those axes return all the preceding/following siblings, so you need to tack on a [1] to the XPath to get only the one node, like this:

          <xsl:variable name="previousDate" select="$currentPage/node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'Blog']/preceding-sibling::node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'BlogPost'][1]/@createDate" />
          <xsl:variable name="currentDate" select="$currentPage/node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'Blog']//node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'BlogPost'][1]/@createDate" />

See, that diagram is what had me so confident this was going to work in the first place. The structure is set up as so:

Home

--Blog

----Blogpost

----Blogpost

--Blog

----Blogpost

----Blogpost

and the createDate is just a standard attribute of the Blogpost document type. I'm trying a bunch of new combinations, but I have the feeling that this should work at least as far as posts within the same blog. Maybe I'm running into issues because this page displays entries from multiple blog nodes.

Hi Chriztian,

I am rendering multiple blogs on the same stream for a homepage of a multi-blog network. Let me take this and see what it does and what I can do from here. Thanks to both you and Doug for your very very fast and helpful responses.

Andrew

Update::

Almost there! This help has been invaluable.

@Chriztian - I took the code you provided and had to alter it a bit. I had mixed things up a bit so following-sibling was what I needed. The following code posts exactly what I need it to...minus one aspect. The first post does not post the date. I tried using position()=1 but the issue is that every time I print the position for posts that do not show the date, it is 1. I'm taking a look at this with fresh eyes this morning and will post if I find anything but if you have any ideas I'd love to hear them. Here is the code I have.

I'm printing out position() for every post that doesn't post a date just for my own reference.

 <xsl:for-each select="$post">
            <xsl:variable name="previousDate" select="$post/following-sibling::node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'BlogPost'][1]/@createDate" />
            <xsl:variable name="currentDate" select="$post/@createDate" />
            <xsl:variable name="currentDateFormat" select="umbraco.library:ShortDate($currentDate)"/>
            <xsl:variable name="previousDateFormat" select="umbraco.library:ShortDate($previousDate)"/>
            <xsl:choose>
              <xsl:when test="$previousDateFormat != $currentDateFormat">
                <xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:FormatDateTime($currentDateFormat, 'MMM d')"/>
              </xsl:when>
              <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:value-of select="position()"/>
              </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
          </xsl:for-each>

I love it. I walked away for the night and it was so obvious with fresh eyes. I needed to use position() outside of the for-each

<xsl:if test="position()=1">
            <xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:FormatDateTime(@createDate, 'MMM d')"/>            
          </xsl:if>
          <xsl:if test="position()&gt;= 2">
          <xsl:for-each select="$post">
            <xsl:variable name="previousDate" select="$post/following-sibling::node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'BlogPost'][1]/@createDate" />
            <xsl:variable name="currentDate" select="$post/@createDate" />
            <xsl:variable name="currentDateFormat" select="umbraco.library:ShortDate($currentDate)"/>
            <xsl:variable name="previousDateFormat" select="umbraco.library:ShortDate($previousDate)"/>
            <xsl:choose>
              <xsl:when test="$previousDateFormat != $currentDateFormat">
                <xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:FormatDateTime($currentDateFormat, 'MMM d')"/>
              </xsl:when>
              <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:value-of select="position()"/>
              </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
          </xsl:for-each>
          </xsl:if>

works like a charm now!

thanks again for everybody's help

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