XSLfast offers an "if editor" which allows you to design conditions for a selected element.
You can apply specific conditions on all possible elements and table rows, meaning that those elements can be connected with conditions controlling whether they are displayed or not.
On the left side there is the familiar XML tree where you select a node if that is necessary for your condition. As you create an if condition explicitly for the element you selected on the sheet first, you can also formulate conditions which do not involve a certain node from the XML tree.
On the left side you have your XML tree. On the right side there is a window for setting in condition.
There are basic XSL functions available in four menus in the right top corner of the editor - Node Set, String, Boolean, Number but should have some XPath and XSL skills to use them. They are active if the cursor is in one if the entry fields and they contain the most commonly used functions, which can be used by clicking them.
The menu Node Set consists of:
The menu String consists of:
The menu Boolean consists of:
The menu Number consists of:
It is possible to drag and drop the node from the XML tree on the left to the condition field. If the function is typed or selected in the condition field, you can also drag and drop the node you need just into this function's brackets.
Your condition can consist of one or two parts. You can use the following operators in the conditions:
Example: Use the Example.xml from the tutorial 10_Example_Manual. Keep the page grouped to Report and open a table with one row and three columns. Group the table to ProductGroup/Product:
The processed layout looks like this:
Let us assume you want all products with product numbers smaller than 4 to be hidden. You have to create a condition for the XML element containing the product name. Select that element and click the function If in the inspector window.
As the condition depends on the product number, you need to drag that node into the first entry field. You can also enter the name manually but make sure to consider all cases.
The condition is: display the product name only if the product number is bigger than 3. Select the ">" operator from the middle box and enter 3 into the right field:
Click "Ok" to apply the condition.
The resulting PDF looks like this now:
The product name is only displayed for products with product number bigger than 3.
If you like, you can also hide the product numbers for the hidden products. Simply apply the same if condition to the XML element containing the product number.
This will be the result:
In this style you can also suppress the display of the ProductGroup for the suppressed products. If a row shows no entries any more due to the conditions, it is suppressed entirely:
It is possible to create several conditions which can be combined by "AND" (meaning that all conditions have to be true) or "OR" (which means that one or the other condition has to be true).
Conditions you have entered before entered can be reselected in the select box below the conditions. The number of entries available there can be specified with the function File->Preferences->View options->Length of history for XPath expressions.
All entries can be removed from the select box with the button "Clear history".
More examples:
You need to generate data only if the number of the specific elements is 5. This condition will look like this:
You can enter several conditions to one element generation. They can be listed with the AND/OR statements:
For your convenience it is possible to choose one of the recently created conditions by choosing them in the select box at the bottom of the XPath expression field. It is also easy to clear XPath expression fields just by pressing the Clear button.
By pressing the Evaluate button you can see the result of the XPath expression you have entered above.