.ANX (HotDocs XML) to HTML via XSLT Example

This is a reference sample of an XSL transform that can be used on any HotDocs XML style document. As you may know, A2J Guided Interviews output .ANX formatted XML. This transform converts the ANX file into an HTML table that lists all of the variables that were created by the A2J Guided Interview. Here is a sample ANX file generated by the Iowa Intake Interview that ask the user lots of questions about eligibility for legal aid:

• IowaIntakeANX.txt

As you can see, ANX XML uses a single element - "Answer" and puts the name of the variable into an attribute. The XSL transform looks like this:

• XSLTransform.txt

Let's break it down so that you can see what is going on...

The first functional line ...

<xsl:template match="/AnswerSet">

... says that we are looking for the "AnswerSet" tag and anything inside it. That's pretty standard XQuery.

The next section of code ...

	<xsl:element name="table">
   <xsl:attribute name = "border" >1</xsl:attribute> 
   <xsl:attribute name = "cellpadding" >10</xsl:attribute> 
   <xsl:element name="tr">
   <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:text>#</xsl:text>
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:text>variable name</xsl:text>
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:text>type</xsl:text>
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:text>value</xsl:text>
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   </xsl:element> <!-- tr --> 

Creates the output table with a border of 1, cellpadding of 10 and 4 columns with column headers of "#", 'Variable name", "type" and ""value".

The next section of code...

<xsl:for-each select="//Answer">

loops through all of the "Answer" tags found inside of the "AnswerSet" tag and this code ...

 <xsl:variable name="getanswers" select="position()"/>

... keeps a counter for the first column of the table. For every "Answer" tag found, we want to start a new row in the table. This is accomplished with the next section of code...

<xsl:element name="tr">
   <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:value-of select="$getanswers"/>
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:value-of select="@name"/>
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   <xsl:element name="td">
 

The table row is output with the counter and variable name. Notice we are selecting for "@name" which gets us the attribute named "name". That is where variable name is in ANX XML. It's not in the tag since all of the tags are "Answer" tags. Now to get the type and value of the variable, we have to use an XSL case statement which is called a "Choose/When" in XSL. This section of code looks for the type of variable by looking for the tag names "RptValue", "TextValue", etc.

<xsl:choose>
   <xsl:when test="RptValue">
   <xsl:text>Multiple Text</xsl:text>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:when test="TextValue">
   <xsl:text>Text</xsl:text>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:when test="MCValue">
   <xsl:text>Multiple Choice</xsl:text>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:when test="NumValue">
   <xsl:text>Number</xsl:text>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:when test="TFValue">
   <xsl:text>True/False</xsl:text>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:when test="DateValue">
   <xsl:text>Date</xsl:text>
   </xsl:when>
   <xsl:otherwise>
   <xsl:text>otherwise</xsl:text>
   </xsl:otherwise>
   </xsl:choose>
   </xsl:element>

Getting the value of the variable is trivial at this point, since we are pointing at the variable, we use the "." shortcut notation.

 <xsl:element name="td">
   <xsl:value-of select="."/> 
   </xsl:element> <!-- td --> 
   </xsl:element> <!-- tr --> 

... The above code also closes off the table cell and the table row since we are all done with this variable.

This code closes the for-each loop ...

 </xsl:for-each> <!-- end of foreach for PersonInformation --> 

This code closes the table ...

 </xsl:element> <!-- table -->  

... and we are done.

Here is what the table looks like after the transform as run ...

Beside the illustrative or tutorial value of this transform, it could also be used by many word processing, spreadsheet and database applications that are able to import variables from HTML tables. The main value, however, is to demonstrate how to loop through the ANX XML and how the data can be transformed into any type of text output, not just more XML.

Here is the complete XSL transform file in a zip file in case you want to download it and modify it. I donate it to the public domain for anyone who wants to make use of it for any purpose whatsoever. If you have any questions or you want assistance with creating an XSL transform for your legal aid or court automation project, you can contact me at the following numbers or email...

John Mayer
Executive Director
Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction / CALI
312-906-5307 (office)
jmayer@cali.org