Problem using XML

evil-monkey

Hi there,

I'm using XML for the development of an online bibliography, that simply outputs the info on a particular work when you click on the particular work's title. It's fairly straight-forward.

The problem is this: the HTML displays all of the titles of the works in a column. However, some of the titles need to be italicised, while others don't.

Because the formatting occurs on the HTML side, does formatting have to be consistent across each of the works? ie. Is it possible to output some TITLE tags in italics, and others as normally? (which I presume requires formatting to occur on the XML side, which as far as I know can't be done)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Farls

Not 100% sure what your trying to do from your explanation but I would guess you need to look in to putting an attribute on the title tag. You can then use the attribute to figure out if it should be formatted specially or not?

CuAnnan

Can you give more detail on what approach you're taking, preferably a link to a demo?
It's difficult to answer the question if we don't know the approach.

amen

which I presume requires formatting to occur on the XML side

XML is used to store and transmit data. You shouldn't be adding any forming to your xml.

What I would do is either an attribute Italics which has a value of true/false
on the Title XML node i.e
[PHP]
<books>
<book>
<Title Italics=true> The Bible</>
</book>
<book>
<Title Italics=false> Hard Times</>
</book>
</books>
[/PHP]

I would then use XSL to transform the xml and output html. As I was processing xml via xsl I would check for the Italics=true and put an HTML italics tag around the title as required.

evil-monkey

Sorry for the lack of clarification. Don't have a demo going yet, but I can give ye the code if that helps:

XML is as follows:

<OTHER_WORKS>
        <TITLE>"Name of Essay One"</TITLE>
        <MEDIUM>Essay</MEDIUM>
        <DATE>First published 1900</DATE>
        <POSTHUMOUS>No</POSTHUMOUS>
        <FIRSTPUBLISHED>Publication Title</FIRSTPUBLISHED>
        <NOTE>-</NOTE>
    </OTHER_WORKS>
    <OTHER_WORKS>
        <TITLE>Name of Collection One</TITLE>
        <MEDIUM>Collection</MEDIUM>
        <DATE>First published 1920</DATE>
        <POSTHUMOUS>No</POSTHUMOUS>
        <FIRSTPUBLISHED>Publication Title</FIRSTPUBLISHED>
        <NOTE>-</NOTE>

Then, the formatting for these is handled on the HTML as follows:

function displayOther_WorksInfo(i) 

{ title=(z[i].getElementsByTagName("TITLE")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); 
medium=(z[i].getElementsByTagName("MEDIUM")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); 
date=(z[i].getElementsByTagName("DATE")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); 
posthumous=(z[i].getElementsByTagName("POSTHUMOUS")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); 
firstpublished=(z[i].getElementsByTagName("FIRSTPUBLISHED")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); 
note=(z[i].getElementsByTagName("NOTE")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
 txt="<b>Title:</b> "+title+"<br /><b>Date(s):</b> "+date+"<br /><b>Posthumous publication:</b> "+posthumous+"<br /><b>First published in:</b> <i>"+firstpublished+"</i><br /><b>Medium:</b> "+medium+"<br /><b>Note:</b> "+note; document.getElementById("showWork").innerHTML=txt; }

As you can see, if I format TITLE to be italicised (as I have with FIRSTPUBLISHED), then all titles will be italicised, but in the examples in the XML, I only want the second text, Collection One, to be italicised, not Essay One.

Any ideas?

Giblet

Add an attribute
<TITLE class="italic">"My Title"</TITLE>
Then, in your example, you could probably do something like

var title = z[i].getElementsByTagName("Title");
if(title.className == "italic")
{
    title.style.fontStyle = "italic";
}

There are much easier ways to do this, XSL for one.