Question

In the following code snippet, I have 3 for-each’s but it seems to me they ought to be able to combine into one. It works as is, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a more elegant way to write it?

    <xsl:for-each select="/essentials/webservice">
        <xsl:for-each select="document(@filename)/productSearchResponse/products/product">
            <xsl:sort select="producingRegion" order="ascending"/> 
            <xsl:for-each select="producingRegion[not(preceding::producingRegion=.)]">
                <xsl:value-of select="."/>
                <br/>
            </xsl:for-each> 
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:for-each>

Answer 1

It’s hard to give an answer without knowing the expected result and structure of the input XML, but I believe this should work.

<xsl:for-each select="/essentials/webservice">
    <xsl:for-each select="document(@filename)/productSearchResponse/products/product/producingRegion[not(preceding::producingRegion=.)]">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
            <br/>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>

Edit: I just noticed that document(@filename) is a function call, not a node test. In that case, I think you need two for-eaches.

You can make it a little more concise by using a double slash in the XPath expression, though I tend to think that’s not a very good practice:

<xsl:for-each select="/essentials/webservice">
    <xsl:for-each select="document(@filename)//producingRegion[not(preceding::producingRegion=.)]">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
            <br/>
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>