Sorting nodes

[Griff]

I have an XML document that contains a set of nodes with attributes.

As a stylised example, consider the following XML document:

oDoc.loadXML "<i><d a='1'/><d a='3'/><d a='4'/><d a='2'/><d a='0'/></i>"

What I want to do is set a nodelist to the <d/> elements and iterate through
them, printing out the attribute values.

For example (VB6 code):
'----------------------------------------
Dim oDoc As New MSXML2.DOMDocument
Dim oNodes As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
Dim oNode As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNode

oDoc.loadXML "<i><d a='1'/><d a='3'/><d a='4'/><d a='2'/><d a='0'/></i>"

Set oNodes = oDoc.selectNodes("//d")

For Each oNode In oNodes
Debug.Print oNode.Attributes.getNamedItem("a").Text
Next oNode
'----------------------------------------

However, what I REALLY want to do is to pre-order the nodes so that they are
in ascending (or descending) attribute value.

I'm thinking along the lines of using the SORT function on an ADO
recordset....

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Griff

[gadrin7]

fairly easy if you know how to use XSL (this uses MSXML)

create the two files below and drop them into the same folder.

first the XML file...

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="SortingNodes.xsl"?>
<i>
<d a="1"/>
<d a="3"/>
<d a="4"/>
<d a="2"/>
<d a="0"/>
</i>

then the XSL file...

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>

<xsl:template match="*">
<!-- loop thru the nodes in the first list -->
<xsl:for-each select="//d/@a">
<!-- sort the output -->
<xsl:sort select="." order="descending"/>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
<xsl:if test="position() != last()">
<!-- if it's not the last item found, place a comma after it -->
<xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

you can then extract the values of each from the comma separated list.

you can also do the transform inside the VB program, and get the
results without having to use the browser.

ResultText = xmlDoc.transformNode(styleDoc)

look at the .transformNode method

[Griff]

Fantastic - I'll look into that.

The actual XML nodes have many attributes, so I'll create an XSL template
and programatically change the place holders to point at different attribute
names and change the ascending/descending values and then transform the XML.

Griff