XSLT, sort and group by year-date

foreachsortingumbracoxsltxslt-grouping

Regarding Umbraco XSLT version 1.

I have aprox. 150 news items in XML. Lets say like this (all is pseudocode until I get more familiar with this xml/xslt):

<news>
  <data alias=date>2008-10-20</data>
</news>
<news>
  <data alias=date>2009-11-25</data>
</news><news>
  <data alias=date>2009-11-20</data>
</news> etc. etc....

I would like to run through the XML and create html-output as a news archive. Something like (tags not important):

2008
  Jan
  Feb
  ...
2009
  Jan
  Feb
  Mar
  etc. etc.

I can only come up with a nested for-each (pseudocode):

var year_counter = 2002
var month_counter = 1
<xsl:for-each select="./data [@alias = 'date']=year_counter">
  <xsl:for-each select="./data [@alias = 'date']=month_counter">
    <xsl:value-of select="data [@alias = 'date']>
  "...if month_counter==12 end, else month_counter++ ..."
  </xsl:for-each>
"... year_counter ++ ..."
</xsl:for-each>

But a programmer pointet out that looping through 10 years will give 120 loops and that is bad coding. Since I think Umbraco caches the result I am not so concerned, plus in this case there will be a max. of 150 records.

Any clues on how to sort and output many news items and group them in year and group each year in months?

Br. Anders

Best Solution

For the following solution I used this XML file:

<root>
  <news>
    <data alias="date">2008-10-20</data>
  </news>
  <news>
    <data alias="date">2009-11-25</data>
  </news>
  <news>
    <data alias="date">2009-11-20</data>
  </news>
  <news>
    <data alias="date">2009-03-20</data>
  </news>
  <news>
    <data alias="date">2008-01-20</data>
  </news>
</root>

and this XSLT 1.0 transformation:

<xsl:stylesheet 
  version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:cfg="http://tempuri.org/config"
  exclude-result-prefixes="cfg"
>
  <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" />

  <!-- index news by their "yyyy" value (first 4 chars) -->
  <xsl:key 
    name="kNewsByY"  
    match="news" 
    use="substring(data[@alias='date'], 1, 4)" 
  />
  <!-- index news by their "yyyy-mm" value (first 7 chars) -->
  <xsl:key 
    name="kNewsByYM" 
    match="news" 
    use="substring(data[@alias='date'], 1, 7)" 
  />

  <!-- translation table (month number to name) -->
  <config xmlns="http://tempuri.org/config">
    <months>
      <month id="01" name="Jan" />
      <month id="02" name="Feb" />
      <month id="03" name="Mar" />
      <month id="04" name="Apr" />
      <month id="05" name="May" />
      <month id="06" name="Jun" />
      <month id="07" name="Jul" />
      <month id="08" name="Aug" />
      <month id="09" name="Sep" />
      <month id="10" name="Oct" />
      <month id="11" name="Nov" />
      <month id="12" name="Dec" />
    </months>
  </config>

  <xsl:template match="root">
    <xsl:copy>
      <!-- group news by "yyyy" -->
      <xsl:apply-templates mode="year" select="
        news[
          generate-id()
          =
          generate-id(key('kNewsByY', substring(data[@alias='date'], 1, 4))[1])
        ]
      ">
        <xsl:sort select="data[@alias='date']" order="descending" />
      </xsl:apply-templates>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- year groups will be enclosed in a <year> element -->
  <xsl:template match="news" mode="year">
    <xsl:variable name="y" select="substring(data[@alias='date'], 1, 4)" />
    <year num="{$y}">
      <!-- group this year's news by "yyyy-mm" -->
      <xsl:apply-templates mode="month" select="
        key('kNewsByY', $y)[
          generate-id() 
          =
          generate-id(key('kNewsByYM', substring(data[@alias='date'], 1, 7))[1])
        ]
      ">
        <xsl:sort select="data[@alias='date']" order="descending" />
      </xsl:apply-templates>
    </year>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- month groups will be enclosed in a <month> element -->
  <xsl:template match="news" mode="month">
    <xsl:variable name="ym" select="substring(data[@alias='date'], 1, 7)" />
    <xsl:variable name="m" select="substring-after($ym, '-')" />
    <!-- select the label of the current month from the config -->
    <xsl:variable name="label" select="document('')/*/cfg:config/cfg:months/cfg:month[@id = $m]/@name" />
    <month num="{$m}" label="{$label}">
      <!-- process news of the current "yyyy-mm" group -->
      <xsl:apply-templates select="key('kNewsByYM', $ym)">
        <xsl:sort select="data[@alias='date']" order="descending" />
      </xsl:apply-templates>
    </month>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- for the sake of this example, news elements will just be copied -->
  <xsl:template match="news">
    <xsl:copy-of select="." />
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

When the transformation is applied, the following output is produced:

<root>
  <year num="2009">
    <month num="11" label="Nov">
      <news>
        <data alias="date">2009-11-25</data>
      </news>
      <news>
        <data alias="date">2009-11-20</data>
      </news>
    </month>
    <month num="03" label="Mar">
      <news>
        <data alias="date">2009-03-20</data>
      </news>
    </month>
  </year>
  <year num="2008">
    <month num="10" label="Oct">
      <news>
        <data alias="date">2008-10-20</data>
      </news>
    </month>
    <month num="01" label="Jan">
      <news>
        <data alias="date">2008-01-20</data>
      </news>
    </month>
  </year>
</root>

It has the right structure already, you can adapt actual appearance to your own needs.

The solution is a two-phase Muenchian grouping approach. In the first phase, news items are grouped by year, in the second phase by year-month.

Please refer to my explanation of <xsl:key> and key() over here. You don't need to read the other question, though it is a similar problem. Just read the lower part of my answer.

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