How do i render a limited number of elements in XSLT? - xslt

Question

I need to render a specified number of elements from an XML source, where the elements "DueDate" is not exeeded. Here is an example of the xml:
<Items>
<Item>
<Title>Title 1</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2008</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 2</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2009</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 3</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2010</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 4</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2011</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 5</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2012</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 6</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2013</DueDate>
</Item>
</Items>
The number of elements to display and the current date are passed to the XSLT as paramaters.
Is it possible to count the number of rendered elements in a for-each loop in Xslt? Or is there a better approach?
An example could be that the limit was set to 3 elements. In this example I would expect to see the following results: "Title 3", "Title 4" and "Title 5".

Answer 1

You can do something like this. Make it into a template you can call with paramters:
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable name="count" select="3"/>
<xsl:for-each select="Items/Item">
<xsl:if test="position() < $count">
<xsl:value-of select="Title"/> - <xsl:value-of select="DueDate"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>

Answer 2

Try nesting this inside a standard xsl for-each where n in your case is 3:
<xsl:if test="position() < n">
But if you also want to check the date then you will need nest another if and create dates in the format yyyyMMdd which can be numerically compared like this:
<xsl:variable name="secondDate" select="concat(substring(submissionDeadline, 1,4),substring(submissionDeadline, 6,2),substring(submissionDeadline, 9,2))"/>
<xsl:if test="$firstDate > $secondDate">

Answer 3

The main problem is that your input XML does not conform to the useful 'yyyy-mm-dd' format. This makes sorting/filtering these items a pain in the ass behind.
If I understand you correctly, you need to
filter on due date first
apply a maximum to the output after that
The XPath for selecting all <Item>s up to a certain maximum due date would go like this:
Item[
substring-before(DueDate, '-')
<=
substring-before($MaxDueDate, '-')
and
substring-before(substring-after(DueDate, '-'), '-')
<=
substring-before(substring-after($MaxDueDate, '-'), '-')
and
substring-after(substring-after(DueDate, '-'), '-')
<=
substring-after(substring-after($MaxDueDate, '-'), '-')
][
position() <= $MaxCount
]
Now compare that to the trivial way, if you had 'yyyy-mm-dd' dates:
Item[
DueDate <= $MaxDueDate
][
position() <= $MaxCount
]
So, to copy only these elements, you would go:
<xsl:template match="Items">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:copy-of select="
{ the expression I gave above }
" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
For parameter values of '01-02-2012' and 4, respectively, I get:
<Items>
<Item>
<Title>Title 1</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2008</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 2</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2009</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 3</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2010</DueDate>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>Title 4</Title>
<DueDate>01-02-2011</DueDate>
</Item>
</Items>