XSL Looping: how to loop where node name increments

Question

How would one loop thru a set of nodes, where the node name has a numeric number and the number increments as in a series?

ex:

<nodes>
  <node1>
  <node2>
  ...
  <node10>
</nodes>

Answer 1

A recursive named template can do that:

<xsl:template name="processNode">
  <xsl:param name="current" select="1"/> 
  <xsl:variable name="currentNode" select="*[local-name() = concat('node', $current)]"/>

  <xsl:if test="$currentNode">
    <!-- Process me -->
    <xsl:call-template name="processNode">
      <xsl:with-param name="current" select="$current + 1"/>
    </xsl:call-template>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

Or if you don't care about order, just a normal template:

<xsl:template match="*[starts-with(local-name(), 'node')]">
</xsl:template>

Answer 2

Unless I am missing something completely what you need is as simple as this.

<xsl:template match="nodes">
    <xsl:for-each select="*">
        <!-- Do what you want with each node. -->
    </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

Answer 3

<xsl:template match="nodes">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="*">
    <!-- the xsl:sort is redundant if the input already is in correct order -->
    <xsl:sort select="substring-after(name(), 'node')" data-type="number" />
  </xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="nodes/*">
  <!-- whatever -->
</xsl:template>