Question Trying to create a transform, stuck on xsl:for-each

StoneCodeMonkey · Dec 19, 2011

I'm trying to create a transform, for the first time, and could use a few pointers.

I am applying the transform to an XML Comment Document produced from Visual Studio. The general structure of the XML file is:

VB.NET:

<doc>
  <assembly>
    <name>MyAssembly</name>
  </assembly>
  <members>
    <member name="T:MyNamespace.MyClasses.MyClass">
      <summary>
        Provides access to instances of the.
      </summary>
    </member>
    <member name="M:MyNamespace.MyClasses.MyClass.#ctor">
      <summary>
        Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="MyNamespace.MyClasses.MyClass" /> class.
      </summary>
    </member>
  </members>
</doc>

I'm trying to start simple, just getting the assembly name and then looping over the members to return the name. The transform I have thus far...

VB.NET:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl"
>
  <xsl:output method="html"/>
  
  <!--Locates the Assembly Name and Stores for reference-->
  <xsl:variable name="AssemblyName">
    <xsl:value-of select="doc/assembly/name"/>
  </xsl:variable>

  <!--Reads entire contents of XML file.-->
  <xsl:template match="doc">
    <!--Create an HTML output-->
    <html>
      <body>
        <h1>
          Visual Studio XML Comment Documentation for
          <tt style="font-size: inherit; color: #0000FF; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-variant: inherit; text-decoration: underline;">
            <xsl:value-of select="$AssemblyName"/>
          </tt>
        </h1>
        <xsl:for-each select="member">
          <p>
            <xsl:value-of select="name"/>
          </p>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

The only part that works is getting the Assembly name.

I would have thought that the for-each would have simply inserted <p> member name<p/> for each member in the collection.

VB.NET:

<xsl:for-each select="member">
          <p>
            <xsl:value-of select="name"/>
          </p>
        </xsl:for-each>

Can anyone tell me what I am missing?

Regards,

StoneCodeMonkey · Dec 19, 2011

Updated Template

This works for getting each member.

VB.NET:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl"
>
  <xsl:output method="html"/>

  <!--Locates the Assembly Name and Stores for reference-->
  <xsl:variable name="AssemblyName">
    <xsl:value-of select="doc/assembly/name"/>
  </xsl:variable>

  <!--Reads entire contents of XML file.-->
  <xsl:template match="doc">
    <!--Create an HTML output-->
    <html>
      <body>
        <h1>
          Visual Studio XML Comment Documentation for
          <tt style="font-size: inherit; color: #0000FF; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-variant: inherit; text-decoration: underline;">
            <xsl:value-of select="$AssemblyName"/>
          </tt>
        </h1>

        <xsl:apply-templates select="members"/>

      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="members">
    <xsl:for-each select="member">
      <p>
        <xsl:value-of select="@name"/>
      </p>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Now just to figure our how to process all of the possible data in each member.

Regards,

StoneCodeMonkey · Dec 20, 2011

What Is The Best Approach Parsing the XML File

Ok, home from work, time to go at this again.

So, far I have found that getting the Assembly name and all of the member names is pretty straight forward. However, after that it becomes allot more difficult.

So before the questions, a little background...

Article on MSDN
Documenting Your Code With XML Comments

Documenting Your Code with XML

List of XML tags I would expect to find in the XML file.
Recommended XML Tags for Documentation Comments

ID strings embedded in the file.
Processing the XML File

So, when I started looking through the file I found tags that are not listed in the "Recommended XML Tags" documentation.

Undocumented XML Tags Produced by Visual Studio
<filterpriority>2</filterpriority>
FiltorPriority affects Visual Studio Intellisense as mentioned in this MSDN article.
Documenting Your Code With XML Comments

<PermissionSet>
<IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.SecurityPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Flags="UnmanagedCode, ControlEvidence" />
</PermissionSet>
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/thd4h5h0.aspx</P>

I thought there should be a better means of identifying all of the elements and attributes in the XML with writing code to iterate over the entire file. Turns out you can infer a schema from the source xml file which helps to identify every possible element and attribute.

Pop this in a Console app and point to am XML file to see the schema.

VB.NET:

Dim reader As XmlReader = XmlReader.Create("C:\My\WebSites\VS2010 XML Comment Documentation\SampleVsXmlCommentDocument.xml")
        Dim schemaSet As XmlSchemaSet = New XmlSchemaSet()
        Dim schema As XmlSchemaInference = New XmlSchemaInference()

        schemaSet = schema.InferSchema(reader)
        For Each s As XmlSchema In schemaSet.Schemas()
            s.Write(Console.Out)
        Next

        Console.Read()

Also, open one of the XML files from the Framework folder in VS, use the Create Schema tool. You will see a nice treeview of the schema in the Schema Explorer.

What I was thinking is that I should be able to iterate over each "Member" using the Schema. Not that every member shares the same number of child elements or attributes.

But I just don't have any experience in the XML namespace. Does anyone have any guidance on where to start? Basically, I want to output for each member it parameters and the info from the XML comments.

Regards,

Question Trying to create a transform, stuck on xsl:for-each

StoneCodeMonkey

Well-known member

StoneCodeMonkey

Well-known member

StoneCodeMonkey

Well-known member

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