Question

I am using an XSLT to sort a piece of XML such as:

<feed>
   <entry>
      <title>A To Z</title>
   </entry>
   <entry>
      <title>Action</title>
   </entry>
</feed>

The XSLT looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
 xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

 <xsl:param name="name" select="'title'" />
 <xsl:param name="order" select="'ascending'" />

 <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />

 <xsl:template match="@* | node()">
  <xsl:copy>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()" />
  </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>

 <xsl:template match="atom:feed">
  <xsl:copy>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="/atom:feed/*[not(self::atom:entry)]" />
   <xsl:apply-templates select="/atom:feed/atom:entry">
    <xsl:sort select="*[name() = $name]" order="{$order}" />
    <xsl:sort select="atom:id" data-type="number" />
   </xsl:apply-templates>
  </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I expect the values to come out in an order such as A To Z, then Action, but the result contains the opposite. It would look like the whitespace is being ignored as a value to sort by.

Answer 1

In XSLT 1.0 the sorting is implementation defined, so it is quite possible some implementations ignore space for sorting. Which implementation are you using?

I’d recommend something like:

<xsl:sort select="translate(*[name() = $name],' ','_')" order="{$order}" />


Might solve your problem (although again depends on how the implementation of XSLT you are using sorts ‘_’)