displaying first and second nodes in an xml document

I am trying to perform a simple action in my xslt document, but it's become frustratingly difficult to get it working satisfactorily.

I want to sort the xml document by date so that the most recent article is first. I then want to display details of the most recent article, details of the second most recent article, and a link to the rest of the articles.

However, it seems I can't use the <xsl:sort select="Date"> statement without putting it in a foreach loop ... obviously not what I want to do as it will mean I end up with 5 iterations through my xslt when I only want to show the last two insideview nodes.

My xml document looks like this:

<InsideViewList>
<InsideView>
<Title>story four</Title>
<StandFirst>standfirst four</StandFirst>
<Date>2004-07-26T00:00:00</Date>
<ImagePath></ImagePath>
<XMLDoc>storyfour</XMLDoc>
</InsideView><InsideView>
<Title>story five</Title>
<StandFirst>standfirst five</StandFirst>
<Date>2004-08-03T00:00:00</Date>
<ImagePath></ImagePath>
<XMLDoc>storyfive</XMLDoc>
</InsideView><InsideView>
<Title>story three</Title>
<StandFirst>standfirst three</StandFirst>
<Date>2004-08-01T00:00:00</Date>
<ImagePath></ImagePath>
<XMLDoc>storythree</XMLDoc>
</InsideView><InsideView>
<Title>story two</Title>
<StandFirst>standfirst two</StandFirst>
<Date>2004-08-03T00:00:00</Date>
<ImagePath></ImagePath>
<XMLDoc>storytwo</XMLDoc>
</InsideView><InsideView>
<Title>story one</Title>
<StandFirst>standfirst one</StandFirst>
<Date>2004-07-30T00:00:00</Date>
<ImagePath></ImagePath>
<XMLDoc>storyone</XMLDoc>
</InsideView>
</InsideViewList>

My xslt look like this:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="InsideViewList">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" border="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" class="headingBar" colspan="3" width="100%" background="/images/heading_slice.jpg" style="padding-left:10px">Inside View</td>
</tr><tr>
<td valign="top" width="75%">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="left" style="margin-top:7px; padding-right:10px;">
<tr>
<td valign="top" rowspan="3" height="100%" style="padding-right:15px; padding-left:0px;">
<img>
<xsl:attribute name="src"><xsl:value-of select="InsideView/ImagePath[position() = 1]"/></xsl:attribute>
</img>
</td>
<td valign="top" class="headingText" style="padding-bottom:14px;"><xsl:value-of select="InsideView/Title[position() = 1]" /></td>
</tr><tr>
<td valign="top" class="normalText"><xsl:value-of select="InsideView/StandFirst[position() = 1]" /></td>
</tr><tr>
<td valign="top" align="right"><a class="main"><xsl:attribute name="href"><xsl:value-of select="InsideView/XMLDoc[position() = 1]" /></xsl:attribute>Full article »</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<td valign="top" background="/images/grey_vert_9c9c9c.gif"><img src="/images/grey_vert_9c9c9c.gif" alt="" /></td>
<td valign="top" width="25%" class="backGroundColor" style="margin-bottom:0px; padding-bottom:0px;">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" width="95%" style="margin-top:7px; margin-left:8px;">
<tr>
<td valign="top" class="boldText" height="30px">Last Inside View:<!-- now I want to display details of the second last article --></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" style="padding-left:15px; padding-bottom:4px;" class="normalText">
<ul><li>
<a class="main"><xsl:attribute name="href"><xsl:value-of select="InsideView/XMLDoc[position() = 2]" /></xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="InsideView/Title[position() = 2]" />
</a></li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left"><hr class="hrGrey" width="95%"/></td>
</tr><tr>
<td valign="top" style="padding-left:15px; padding-bottom:12px;">
<ul>
<li><a href="/Archive.aspx#InsideView" class="main">Archive</a></li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr><tr>
<td valign="top" colspan="3" style="padding-top:0px; margin-top:0px;" background="/images/blue_c6d2ec.gif" height="1px" ><img src="/images/blue_c6d2ec.gif" alt="" valign="bottom" height="1px" width="100%"/></td>
</tr><tr>
<td><img src="/images/1ptrans.gif" alt="" valign="bottom" height="13px" width="100%"/></td>
</tr><tr>
<td valign="top" colspan="3" background="/images/grey_hor_9c9c9c.gif"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

The errors are occuring on the bold, italic lines. How can I sort the document and get the emphasised lines working??

Any ideas???

I had similar issues which forced me to work otherwise.. but in your case, you might find clues on this page :

http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/sect21.html

Look at the bottom, there are two links to "sorting & grouping" and "sorting".. the techniques they explain are often helpful.

Hope this helps