Chapter 8. Sorting Things Out
Sometimes nodes don’t come to you in a convenient
order. XSLT’s sort
instruction element allows you to sort
nodes in alphabetical or numerical order. You can also use
sort to sort nodes in ascending
(a, b,
c) or descending (z,
y, x) order.
This chapter walks you through a brief exploration of
sort. You can also read about sorting in Section
10 of the XSLT specification. I’ll start, as usual,
with a simple example.
Simple Ascending Sort
If you look at Example 8-1, the document europe.xml in examples/ch08, you’ll notice that the European states are not listed in alphabetical order.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="pretty.xsl" type="text/xsl"?> <europe> <state>Belgium</state> <state>Germany</state> <state>Finland</state> <state>Greece</state> <state>Ireland</state> <state>Luxembourg</state> <state>Portugal</state> <state>Spain</state> <state>Andorra</state> <state>Belarus</state> <state>Monaco</state> <state>Sweden</state> <state>United Kingdom</state> <state>Austria</state> <state>Malta</state> <state>Vatican City</state> <state>Bulgaria</state> <state>Bosnia-Herzegovina</state> <state>Cyprus</state> <state>France</state> <state>Estonia</state> <state>Italy</state> <state>Hungary</state> <state>Latvia</state> <state>Ukraine</state> <state>Lithuania</state> <state>Moldova</state> <state>Denmark</state> <state>Poland</state> <state>Romania</state> <state>Slovenia</state> <state>The ...
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