I found this page describing the Muenchian method, but I think I'm applying it wrong.
Consider that this would return a set of ages:
/doc/class/person/descriptive[(@name='age')]/value
1..2..2..2..3..3..4..7
But I would like a nodeset only one node for each age.
1..2..3..4..7
Each of these seem to return all of the values, instead of unique values:
/doc/class/person/descriptive[(@name='age')][not(value=preceding-sibling::value)]/value
/doc/class/person/descriptive[(@name='age')]/value[not(value=preceding-sibling::value)]
What am I missing?
Here's an example:
<root>
<item type='test'>A</item>
<item type='test'>B</item>
<item type='test'>C</item>
<item type='test'>A</item>
<item type='other'>A</item>
<item type='test'>B</item>
<item type='other'>D</item>
<item type=''>A</item>
</root>
And the XPath:
//preceding::item/preceding::item[not(.=preceding-sibling::item)]/text()
Results:
A B C D
EDIT:
As mousio commented this doesn't capture the last item in a list if it's the only time it appears. Taking that and Fëanor's comment into account, here's a better solution:
/root/item[not(.=preceding-sibling::item)]
Here is the Muenchian version of BQ's answer using his data:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output indent="yes" method="text"/>
<xsl:key name="item-by-value" match="item" use="."/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates select="/root/item"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="item">
<xsl:if test="generate-id() = generate-id(key('item-by-value', normalize-space(.)))">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
This transform gives
A
B
C
D
- The
key()
lookup above in the template for item
returns a nodeset containing all the item
elements with the same string value as the context node.
- If you apply a function that expects a single node to a nodeset, it will operate on the first node in that nodeset.
- All calls to
generate-id()
are guaranteed to generate the same ID for a given node during a single pass through a document.
- Therefore, the test will be true if the context node is the same node as the first one returned by the
key()
call.
For those who still look for a select distinct in XSLT:
With XSLT 2.0,
you can use
"distinct-values(/doc/class/person/descriptive[(@name='age')]/value)"
The Muenchian method uses keys to create a unique list of items from the node set. For your data, the key would look like this:
<!-- Set the name to whatever you want -->
<xsl:key name="PeopleAges" match="/doc/class/person/descriptive[@name = 'age']/value" use="." />
From there, I would personally use xsl:apply-templates
but you can use the following select
attribute in other places:
<!-- you can change `apply-templates` to: `copy-of` or `for-each`. -->
<xsl:apply-templates select="/doc/class/person/descriptive[@name = 'age']/value[count(. | key('PeopleAges', .)[1]) = 1]" />
The accompanying match for the above is much simpler:
<xsl:template match="person/descriptive[@name = 'age']/value">
<strong>Age: </strong><xsl:value-of select="." />
</xsl:template>
Aren't you missing a reference to 'descriptive' right after the preceding-value? Some thing like the following:
/doc/class/person/descriptive[(@name='age')][not(value=preceding-sibling::descriptive[@name='age']/value)]/value
(Haven't tested it)