Howdy Eric,

Are you using XSLT because you need to, or is it because your source is in
XML? Also, do you have any environmental constraints?

The reason I ask is that converting that specific XML to the tab delimited
output you specify looks like it would be much easier via conversion to
JSON and filtered through jq than using XSLT.

kyle

On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 9:42 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> How can I use XSLT to find the direct descendants of a given element with
> a given name?
>
> I want to create a tab-delimited version of an XML file. I have the
> following XML snippet, and notice how each of the persons in the first
> presentation have a single affiliation, but the person of the second
> presentation has two affiliations:
>
>   <session>
>     <presentation>
>       <person>RICHARD G. ANDERSON</person>
>       <affiliation>Lindenwood University</affiliation>
>       <person>AREERAT KICHKHA</person>
>       <affiliation>Lindenwood University</affiliation>
>       <paper>Is Less More?</paper>
>     </presentation>
>     <presentation>
>       <person>BRIAN W. SLOBODA</person>
>       <affiliation>University of Maryland</affiliation>
>       <affiliation>University College</affiliation>
>       <paper>Inflation Policies</paper>
>     </presentation>
>   </session>
>
> I want my resulting tab-delimited file to look like this:
>
>   RICHARD G. ANDERSON  Lindenwood University                      Is Less
> More?
>   AREERAT KICHKHA      Lindenwood University                      Is Less
> More?
>   BRIAN W. SLOBODA     University of Maryland|University College
> Inflation Policies
>
> I have the following XSLT snippet, but my process of getting affiliations
> is not nearly correct:
>
>   <xsl:for-each select=".//presentation">
>     <xsl:for-each select=".//person">
>       <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/><
> xsl:text>&#09;</xsl:text>
>       <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(../
> affiliation)"/><xsl:text>&#09;</xsl:text>
>       <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(../
> paper)"/><xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text>
>     </xsl:for-each>
>   </xsl:for-each>
>
> Can you offer any suggestions? What sort of XPath expression should I be
> using to find all of the affiliation elements between person elements?
> Something with following-sibling?
>