Question

We have an application which has a heirarchical group structure. Some of the groups are passed in this format:

/Geography/NA/US/California

I would like to “unroll” this string so that I can get a node set like the following:

/Geography
/Geography/NA
/Geography/NA/US
/Geography/NA/US/California

I know I can use str:tokenize and get a nodeset like so: [Geography, NA, US, California] but I’m at a loss of how to assemble the parts back together incrementally.

I have most of the exslt functions available to use, but no XSLT 2.0 functions.

Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

This is quite easy in plain XSLT 1.0, all you need is a recursive function like so:

<xsl:template name="UnrollString">
  <xsl:param name="string" select="''" />
  <xsl:param name="head"   select="'/'" />

  <xsl:variable name="tail" select="
    concat(
      substring-after($string, $head), 
      '/'
    )
  " />
  <xsl:variable name="lead" select="
    concat(
      $head, 
      substring-before($tail, '/')
    )
  " />

  <xsl:if test="not($tail = '/')">
    <token>
      <xsl:value-of select="$lead" />
    </token>

    <xsl:call-template name="UnrollString">
      <xsl:with-param name="string" select="$string" />
      <xsl:with-param name="head"   select="concat($lead, '/')" />
    </xsl:call-template>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

Output for '/Geography/NA/US/California' is:

<token>/Geography</token>
<token>/Geography/NA</token>
<token>/Geography/NA/US</token>
<token>/Geography/NA/US/California</token>

Note that:

• The function expects the string to start with a delimiter (i.e. a slash), or the first word (‘Geography’) will be missing in the output.
• A single trailing slash is ignored.
• The delimiter cold easily be generalized and passed in as a parameter.
• You could build a hierarchy easily by placing the recursive call into the <token> element instead of outside.
• The output order can be reversed (longest to shortest) by placing the recursive call above the <token> element instead of below it.
• You would need to use the node-set() extension function to convert the returned tokens into something that can be used further.