On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 11:12:36AM -0800, thufir scripsit:
What I'm trying to export to, CSV:
joe,phone1,phone2,phone3, sue,cell4 ,home5,, alice,atrib6,x7,y9,z10
This is the outcome you want?
What needs to be done so that it can be exported to CSV:
<ul> <li>joe</li> <ul>phone1</ul> <ul>phone2</ul> <ul>phone3</ul> <li>sue</li> <ul>cell4</ul> <ul>home5</ul> <li>alice</li> <ul>atrib6</ul> <ul>x7</ul> <ul>y9</ul> <ul>z10</ul> </ul>
This isn't flat. Which means you have a column mapping problem.
Does the thing expecting the CSV have a fixed list of columns? Do you know what that is? (If the first answer is "yes" and the second answer is "no", or if the first answer is unknown, that's the first thing to do.)
is what I see in the documentation, but not sure how to get there.
Generally speaking XQuery is not the best option for transforming XML content.
There is no requirement to use the CSV functions; those are there to be convenient, and if they're not convenient you don't have to use them.
That vaguely-list thing thing you referenced needs to be split; the usual way in XQuery would be tumbling windows. http://docs.basex.org/wiki/XQuery_3.0#window
One you've got a single record,
string-join($record/descendant::text(),',')
will give you one row of CSV. It won't necessarily look like you want it to; that column mapping problem again.
You can use file:write-text-lines, which appends line ending characters for you, so something like:
file:write-text-lines('path/to/file.csv',for $record in $data return string-join($record/descendant::text(),','))
will get you a CSV file.
The fun part is likely to be some combination of the column mapping and the tumbling windows.
-- Graydon