I've got a simple xsl code to display some dynamically xml.
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:for-each select="NewDataSet/Vehicle">
<div class="item">
<xsl:value-of select="ManufacturerName" /><br />
<xsl:value-of select="Model" /><br />
<xsl:value-of select="Colour" /><br />
£<xsl:value-of select='format-number(Price, "###,###,##0.")' />
</div>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
What I'd like to be able to do is display X number of random distinct node sets instead of all of them. Is this possible using xslt 1.0?
Thanks.
Here is an example that shows how to pick N random nodes out of a given node-set.
You must have a method to generate a random number between 0 and 1 (not including 1) to make this work. In this example, the EXSLT math:random() extension function is used for this purpose. If you are using the MSXML processor, replace this with an extension function as shown here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6607235/3016153
XML
<list>
<item id="1">001</item>
<item id="2">002</item>
<item id="3">003</item>
<item id="4">004</item>
<item id="5">005</item>
<item id="6">006</item>
<item id="7">007</item>
<item id="8">008</item>
<item id="9">009</item>
<item id="10">010</item>
<item id="11">011</item>
<item id="12">012</item>
</list>
XSLT 1.0
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:math="http://exslt.org/math"
extension-element-prefixes="math">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/list">
<output>
<xsl:call-template name="pick-random">
<xsl:with-param name="node-set" select="item"/>
<xsl:with-param name="quota" select="5"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</output>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="pick-random">
<xsl:param name="node-set"/>
<xsl:param name="quota"/>
<xsl:param name="selected" select="dummy-node"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="count($selected) < $quota and $node-set">
<xsl:variable name="set-size" select="count($node-set)"/>
<xsl:variable name="rand" select="floor(math:random() * $set-size) + 1"/>
<!-- recursive call -->
<xsl:call-template name="pick-random">
<xsl:with-param name="node-set" select="$node-set[not(position()=$rand)]"/>
<xsl:with-param name="quota" select="$quota"/>
<xsl:with-param name="selected" select="$selected | $node-set[$rand]"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:copy-of select="$selected"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Result (of an example run)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<output>
<item id="1">001</item>
<item id="3">003</item>
<item id="8">008</item>
<item id="10">010</item>
<item id="12">012</item>
</output>
Note: This method preserves the internal order of the selected items.