How to use XSLT to create distinct values

AB. picture AB. · Feb 18, 2010 · Viewed 92.2k times · Source

I have XML like this:

<items>
  <item>
    <products>
      <product>laptop</product>
      <product>charger</product>
    </products>
  </item>
  <item>
    <products>
      <product>laptop</product>
      <product>headphones</product>  
    </products>  
  </item>
</items>

I want it to output like

laptop
charger
headphones

I was trying to use distinct-values() but I guess i m doing something wrong. Can anyone tell me how to achieve this using distinct-values()? Thanks.

<xsl:template match="/">            
  <xsl:for-each select="//products/product/text()">
    <li>
      <xsl:value-of select="distinct-values(.)"/>
    </li>               
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

but its giving me output like this:

<li>laptop</li>
<li>charger</li>
<li>laptop></li>
<li>headphones</li>

Answer

Mads Hansen picture Mads Hansen · Feb 19, 2010

An XSLT 1.0 solution that uses key and the generate-id() function to get distinct values:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <xsl:stylesheet
   version="1.0"
   xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>

<xsl:key name="product" match="/items/item/products/product/text()" use="." />

<xsl:template match="/">

  <xsl:for-each select="/items/item/products/product/text()[generate-id()
                                       = generate-id(key('product',.)[1])]">
    <li>
      <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </li>
  </xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>