How to do this in XSLT without incrementing variables? (Tweaking Xalan to create a global XSLT iterator. Do I have other options?)

Question

I'm trying to think functional, in XSLT terms, as much as possible, but in this case, I really don't see how to do it without tweaking. I have roughly this data structure:

<transactions>
  <trx>
    <text>abc</text>
    <text>def</text>

    <detail>
      <text>xxx</text>
      <text>yyy</text>
      <text>zzz</text>
    </detail>
  </trx>
</transactions>

Which I roughly want to flatten into this form

<row>abc</row>
<row>def</row>
<row>xxx</row>
<row>yyy</row>
<row>zzz</row>

But the tricky thing is: I want to create chunks of 40 text-rows and transactions mustn't be split across chunks. I.e. if my current chunk already has 38 rows, the above transaction would have to go into the next chunk. The current chunk would need to be filled with two empty rows to complete the 40:

<row/>
<row/>

In imperative/procedural programming, it's very easy. Just create a global iterator variable counting to multiples of 40, and insert empty rows if needed (I have provided an answer showing how to tweak XSLT/Xalan to allow for such variables). But how to do it with XSLT? N.B: I'm afraid recursion is not possible considering the size of data I'm processing... But maybe I'm wrong on that

Answer 1

Build the complete XML data structure as you need in Java. Then, do the simple iteration in XSL over prepared XML.

You might save a lot of effort and provide a maintainable solution.