Webmaster in a Nutshell, Third Edition

Name

<xsl:sort>

Synopsis

The <xsl:sort> instruction appears as a child of either <xsl:apply-templates> or <xsl:for-each>. It changes the order of the context node list from document order to some other order, such as alphabetic. Multiple-key sorts (for example, sort by last name, then by first name, then by middle name) can be performed with multiple <xsl:sort> elements in descending order of importance of the keys. The following attributes are defined:

select

This contains the key to sort by.

data-type

By default, sorting is purely alphabetic. However, alphabetic sorting leads to strange results with numbers. For instance, 10, 100, and 1000 all sort before 2, 3, and 4. You can specify numeric sorting by setting the data-type attribute to number.

lang

Sorting is language dependent. The language can be adjusted by setting the lang attribute to an RFC 1766 language code. The default language is system dependent.

order

This specifies the order by which strings are sorted. The value can be either descending or ascending. The default is ascending.

case-order

The case-order attribute can be set to upper-first or lower-first to specify whether uppercase letters sort before lowercase letters or vice versa. The default depends on the language.

<xsl:sort
   select = "expression"
   [data-type = "text|number"]
   [lang = "langcode"]
   [order = "ascending|descending"]
   [case-order = "upper-first|lower-first"]/>