Summary This snippet illustrates the following: 1. Advanced date sorting (sort month-names) 2. The Muenchian Method for finding distinct elements 3. The use of (simulated) arrays within a stylesheet.

From the xml document listed below it is necessary to produce a list of accounts with a sorted list in descending order of all distinct dates for every account.

Notice how the simulated array $months is declared and used in the stylesheet to sort the elements of the xml source document.

The result is:
-------------
<date>December</date>
<date>July</date>
<date>June</date>
<date>April</date>
<date>March</date>

Additional information

<xsl:stylesheet version='1.0' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform' xmlns:m="mmm" > <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/> <xsl:key name="myKey" match="person/date" use="concat(../account, '::', .)"/> <m:month name="Jan" value="0"/> <m:month name="Feb" value="1"/> <m:month name="Mar" value="2"/> <m:month name="Apr" value="3"/> <m:month name="May" value="4"/> <m:month name="Jun" value="5"/> <m:month name="Jul" value="6"/> <m:month name="Aug" value="7"/> <m:month name="Sep" value="8"/> <m:month name="Oct" value="9"/> <m:month name="Nov" value="10"/> <m:month name="Dec" value="11"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:variable name="months" select="document('')//m:month"/> <xsl:for-each select="/person/date[generate-id(.)=generate-id(key('myKey', concat( ../account, '::', .))[1~)~"> <xsl:sort select="$months[ starts-with( current(), @name ) ~/@value" data-type="number" order="descending"/> <xsl:copy-of select="."/> <xsl:text> </xsl:text> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>