Question

First, I am not a programmer.

I have a huge XML file with terms described thus:

<term>
<termId>MANUAL000399</termId>
<termUpdate>Add</termUpdate>
<termName>care</termName>
<termType>Pt</termType>
<termStatus>Active</termStatus>
<termApproval>Approved</termApproval>
<termCreatedDate>20120618T14:38:20</termCreatedDate>
<termCreatedBy>admin</termCreatedBy>
<termModifiedDate>20120618T14:40:41</termModifiedDate>
<termModifiedBy>admin</termModifiedBy>
</term>

In the file, terms have either

<termType>

Pt or ND

I would like the solution to apply to both.
what I would like to do is be able to go through, look at the word length in
termName
and if there are fewer than 5 characters in there, append another property, a

<termNote> 

in after the

<termModifiedBy> 

property:

<term>
<termId>MANUAL000399</termId>
<termUpdate>Add</termUpdate>
<termName>care</termName>
<termType>Pt</termType>
<termStatus>Active</termStatus>
<termApproval>Approved</termApproval>
<termCreatedDate>20120618T14:38:20</termCreatedDate>
<termCreatedBy>admin</termCreatedBy>
<termModifiedDate>20120618T14:40:41</termModifiedDate>
<termModifiedBy>admin</termModifiedBy>
<termNote label="Short">Short</termNote>
</term>

Can anyone advise what the best approach for this? I found regexes on here but the problem is the application of them, I found someone suggesting /\b[a-zA-Z]{5,}\b/ but I don’t know how to write a script that takes this and then inserts the termNote if it matches.

Answer 1

This transformation can be done by a simple XSLT stylesheet. (XSLT is a language that non-programmers often take to more enthusiastically than programmers. A stylesheet is basically a set of transformation rules: when you see something that matches X, replace it by Y. Of course, once you have mastered XSLT, you can call yourself a programmer).

First some boilerplate:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> <!-- removes whitespace from the input -->
<xsl:output indent="yes"/>      <!-- adds whitespace to the output -->

Then a default template rule that copies things unchanged if there’s no more specific rule:

<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

Then a template rule that matches short terms:

<xsl:template match="term[string-length(termName) &lt; 5]">
  <term>
    <xsl:copy-of select="*"/>
    <termNote label="Short">Short</termNote>
  </term>
</xsl:template>

and then finish off with:

</xsl:stylesheet>

You should be able to run this with any XSLT processor; there are plenty available. If nothing else comes to mind, download KernowForSaxon (from SourceForge) which is a very simple GUI interface around my Saxon processor.