I have a xsl:variable which is to return one node or another depending on which is found

<xsl:variable name="wantednode">
  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="/xmlpage/somesection/wantednode">

    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>

    </xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
<xsl:variable>

The problem is that I want to then select nodes within $wantednode, so the template body needs to return a nodeset. therefore I can't use <xsl:value-of ...> as i could if it was just a string i needed. I thought <xsl:copy-of... would work, but alas no.

Any ideas?

Unfortunately in XSLT version one you can't, not without an extension. If you are using MSXML then you need the node-set function, see here for examples:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...asp?frame=true

You will need to declare the appropriate namespace in your stylesheet.

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

If you know that only one of somesection and defaultsection will be present, you can write

<xsl:variable name="wantednode"
select="/xmlpage/somesection/wantednode | /xmlpage/defaultsection/wantednode"/>

(incidentally, you shouldn't use names beginning "xml" - they are reserved for future standardization)

If you know that if both are present, somesection will come first, then you can write

<xsl:variable name="wantednode"
select="(/xmlpage/somesection/wantednode | /xmlpage/defaultsection/wantednode)[1]"/>

If you don't know the order, you can write:

<xsl:variable name="wantednode"
select="/xmlpage/somesection/wantednode | /xmlpage/defaultsection/wantednode[
   not(/xmlpage/somesection/wantednode)]"/>



Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Thanks Micheal, excellent lateral thinking! No need to use the template bit after all.

Incidentally those were not my real node names, they were just made up for the sake of the example.

Cheers