Sams Teach Yourself XML in 24 Hours

The Data Extraction and Node Collection Methods

Previous hours have demonstrated several of the XSL methods available for node selection, but there are others that haven't been mentioned. There are two different categories that these methods can be placed in. One group is used to extract information from the nodes, and the other group creates a collection of nodes. The data extraction methods are shown in Table 18.1, and the node collection methods are shown in Table 18.2.

Table 18.1. XSL Data Extraction Methods

Method	Purpose
absoluteChildNumber	Returns thenumber of the node relative to its siblings.
ancestorChildNumber	Returns the number of the nearest ancestor of a node.
childNumber	Returns the number of the node relative to siblings with the same ...