Question

I’m having troble with a XML I need to transform woth xslt.

Here is my XML

<Groups>
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system1</Tag1>
                <Tag2>yes</Tag2>
                <Tag3>new york</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1/>
                <Tag2>no</Tag2>
                <Tag3>chicago</Tag3>
            </term>     
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system2</Tag1>
                <Tag2>ok</Tag2>
                <Tag3>paris</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1/>
                <Tag2>help</Tag2>
                <Tag3>london</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1/>
                <Tag2>cancel</Tag2>
                <Tag3>rome</Tag3>
            </term>
</Groups>

And here is my desired output.

<Groups>
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system1</Tag1>
                <Tag2>yes</Tag2>
                <Tag3>new york</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system1</Tag1>
                <Tag2>no</Tag2>
                <Tag3>chicago</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system2</Tag1>
                <Tag2>ok</Tag2>
                <Tag3>paris</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system2</Tag1>
                <Tag2>help</Tag2>
                <Tag3>london</Tag3>
            </term>
            <term>
                <Tag1>My system2</Tag1>
                <Tag2>cancel</Tag2>
                <Tag3>rome</Tag3>
            </term>
</Groups>

All the xslt needs to do is to fill empty tags with value from the previous non-empty tags.

I tried using variable but apparently they do not work like variable in imperative languages.

Any advice on how to do this ?

Thanks

Answer 1

This simple stylesheet should do it:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="*[not(text())]">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:value-of select="../preceding-sibling::*[*[text() and name()=name(current())]][1]/*[text() and name()=name(current())]" />
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

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