Update: Slides are now posted.  PS. I know we went through this material fast, which is why I intentionally left my slides verbose. They should hopefully be of some use to look back through.

Click for slides

Next year I’m going to try to get crowd to do the wave. (assuming they’ll come back)

Here’s a sneak peak of my CQWP talk. Hope to see you there: http://iccsharepoint.com

Making this information available to your item style template is just a couple quick updates.  First, inside ContentQueryMain.xsl, update OuterTemplate.CallItemTemplate to send along the current position as a parameter.

<xsl:template name=”OuterTemplate.CallItemTemplate”>
        <xsl:param name=”CurPosition” />
        <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping=”yes” select=”$BeginListItem” />
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test=”@Style=’NewsRollUpItem’”>
                <xsl:apply-templates select=”.” mode=”itemstyle”>
                    <xsl:with-param name=”EditMode” select=”$cbq_iseditmode” />
                </xsl:apply-templates>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test=”@Style=’NewsBigItem’”>
                <xsl:apply-templates select=”.” mode=”itemstyle”>
                    <xsl:with-param name=”CurPos” select=”$CurPosition” />
                </xsl:apply-templates>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test=”@Style=’NewsCategoryItem’”>
                <xsl:apply-templates select=”.” mode=”itemstyle”>
                    <xsl:with-param name=”CurPos” select=”$CurPosition” />
                </xsl:apply-templates>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:apply-templates select=”.” mode=”itemstyle”>
                    <xsl:with-param name=”CurPos” select=”$CurPosition” />
                </xsl:apply-templates>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
        <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping=”yes” select=”$EndListItem” />
    </xsl:template>

Note that by adding that update, you’ll always send across the current position even if the receiving item style template doesn’t use or declare a CurPos parameter.

Now, whenever you want to use the current position in your item style template, just declare the CurPos parameter and use it.

</xsl:template><xsl:template name=”TableLayout” match=”Row[@Style='TableLayout']” mode=”itemstyle”>
    <xsl:param name=”CurPos”/>
      <xsl:variable name=”SafeImageUrl”>
          <xsl:call-template name=”OuterTemplate.GetSafeStaticUrl”>
              <xsl:with-param name=”UrlColumnName” select=”‘ImageUrl’”/>
          </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:variable>
      <xsl:if test=”$CurPos = ’1′”>
          <tr>
              <td>Column Header 1</td>
              <td>Column Header 2</td>
              <td>Column Header 3</td>
              <td>Column Header 4</td>
          </tr>
      </xsl:if>
      <tr>
          <td><xsl:value-of select=”@Column1″/></td>
          <td><xsl:value-of select=”@Column2″/></td>
          <td><xsl:value-of select=”@Column3″/></td>
          <td><xsl:value-of select=”@Column4″/></td>
      </tr>
  </xsl:template>

I first posted about this in October of 2008: http://www.intranoggin.com/2008/10/765/

Josh Gaffey also wrote a nice post about it in 2009: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joshuag/archive/2009/03/25/custom-date-formats-in-sharepoint-xsl.aspx

The quick tip is that first you add this SharePoint Designer namespace to your CQWP’s .xsl xmlns:ddwrt=http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime

Then you can use the ddwrt:FormatDate function to format dates almost any way you’d like: <xsl:value-of select=”ddwrt:FormatDate(@date, local, formatoption)”/>

<xsl:value-of select=”ddwrt:FormatDate(@Modified, 1033, 1)”/>

Josh included a great table of local and format options in his post.

However, there almost always comes a time later on where you’ll want to see just what the heck the original code did, or you’ll find yourself looking back at an OOTB template and wondering if it came that way or if it was customized at some point.  To make my life easier, I’ve adopted this workflow.

First off, never make changes to the OOTB .xsl sheets.  Always make a copy and point your CQWP’s .dwp at your copies.  I covered this in Tip #1 (http://www.intranoggin.com/2012/02/1042/). 

Second, in those .xsl copies, if you want to update the logic of an OOTB template, comment out the original template version, then make a copy that contains the original with your changes.  I usually leave the commented version right in its original location and put my modified version at the end of the file.

If you didn’t know, comments in .xsl are anything that begins with <!– and ends with –>

As an example, the modified section of .xsl from Tip #7 resides in a file called Custom_ContentQueryMain.xsl and looks like this:

<!--xsl:template name="OuterTemplate.GetGroupName">
        <xsl:param name="GroupName"/>
        <xsl:param name="GroupType"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="string-length(normalize-space($GroupName)) = 0">
                <xsl:value-of select="$BlankGroup"/>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:choose>
                    <xsl:when test="$GroupType='URL'">
                        <xsl:variable name="Url">
                            <xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.FormatValueIntoUrl">
                                <xsl:with-param name="Value" select="$GroupName"/>
                            </xsl:call-template>
                        </xsl:variable>
                        <xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.GetPageNameFromUrlRecursive">
                            <xsl:with-param name="Url" select="$Url"/>
                        </xsl:call-template>
                    </xsl:when>
                    <xsl:otherwise>
                        <xsl:value-of select="$GroupName" />
                    </xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template-->
    <xsl:template name="OuterTemplate.CallPresenceStatusIconTemplate">
        <xsl:if test="string-length(@SipAddress) != 0">
            <span class="presence-status-icon">
                <img src="/_layouts/images/imnhdr.gif" onload="IMNRC('{@SipAddress}')" ShowOfflinePawn="1" alt="" id="{concat('MWP_pawn_',$ClientId,'_',@ID,'type=sip')}"/>
            </span>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template name="OuterTemplate.GetFileNameWithoutExtension">
        <xsl:param name="input"/>
        <xsl:variable name="extension">
          <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($input, '.')"/>
        </xsl:variable>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="contains($extension, '.')">
                <xsl:variable name="afterextension">
              <xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.GetFileNameWithoutExtension">
                <xsl:with-param name="input" select="$extension"/>
              </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:variable>
                <xsl:value-of select="concat(substring-before($input, '.'), $afterextension)"/>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:choose>
                    <xsl:when test="contains($input, '.')">
                        <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($input, '.')"/>
                    </xsl:when>
                    <xsl:otherwise>
                        <xsl:value-of select="$input"/>
                    </xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
    <!--Begin Overrides and Custom Templates-->
    <xsl:template name="OuterTemplate.GetGroupName">
        <xsl:param name="GroupName"/>
        <xsl:param name="GroupType"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="string-length(normalize-space($GroupName)) = 0">
                <xsl:value-of select="$BlankGroup"/>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:choose>
                    <xsl:when test="$GroupType='URL'">
                        <xsl:variable name="Url">
                            <xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.FormatValueIntoUrl">
                                <xsl:with-param name="Value" select="$GroupName"/>
                            </xsl:call-template>
                        </xsl:variable>
                        <xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.GetPageNameFromUrlRecursive">
                            <xsl:with-param name="Url" select="$Url"/>
                        </xsl:call-template>
                    </xsl:when>
                    <xsl:otherwise>
                        <xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.RemovePrependedOrderDigits">
                            <xsl:with-param name="GroupName" select="$GroupName"/>
                        </xsl:call-template>
                    </xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template name="OuterTemplate.RemovePrependedOrderDigits">
        <xsl:param name="GroupName"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="contains($GroupName,'_')">
                <xsl:variable name="OrderBits">
                    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($GroupName,'_')"/>
                </xsl:variable>
                <xsl:choose>
                    <xsl:when test="translate($OrderBits,'0123456789','') = ''">
                        <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($GroupName,'_')"/>
                    </xsl:when>
                    <xsl:otherwise>
                        <xsl:value-of select="$GroupName"/>
                    </xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:value-of select="$GroupName"/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>