Hi,
I am trying to select the value of the last attribute in a set of nodes.
The node set is something like:
    <list>
      <item key="1">
        <tname>1,1</tname>
          </item>
      <item key="2">
        <tname>2,3</tname>
      </item>
     </list>

and the syntax used to get the last attribute is:
<xsl:value-of select="/parameters/parameter[name=$parameter]/list/item[last()][@key]"/>

but this only gives me the text value of the node item (2,3) not the value of the key (2). Why is this?

Think of "/" as meaning "then get...", and "[]" as meaning "selecting only those that have ...". So something that ends /list/item[last()][@key] means "then get the child list elements, then get the child item elements, selecting those that are the last item, selecting only those that have a key attribute".

If the thing you want to select is a key attribute, then the final "/" will be followed by "@key".

Note also that a/b[last()] selects every b that is the last child of its parent a. If you want the last b among all the a's, use (a/b)[last()].

So you probably want (list/item)[last()]/@key, or possibly (list/item/@key)[last()] - if every item has a key these are equivalent.



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

What a usefull answer. I finally understand.

Thankyou.