xml as below:

<data>
  <event>
    <market>
      <result>
        ***some more nodes here
      </result>
      <rule4 w_d_time="" overall_deduction="00" runner_deduction="00" runner_number="4" application_code="B" />
      <rule4 w_d_time="" overall_deduction="25" runner_deduction="25" runner_number="4" application_code="A" />
    </market>
   </event>
</data>



now my code is as follows:

<xsl:if test="rule4[@application_code='B'] and rule4[@w_d_time!='']">
  <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp; Rule 4 </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="@w_d_time"/><xsl:value-of select="@overall_deduction"/>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="rule4[@application_code='A']">
  <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp; Rule 4 </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="@overall_deduction"/><xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp; All Bets</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>



Now the thing is, when I run this, I get the following displayed

Rule 4 &nbsp; All Bets

Any ideas ?

(that output is the HTML by the way). The problem is in the fact that it should display the overall reduction.

Its showing neither 00 or 25 so theres two questions really:

1) why is it not displaying? (I have tried rule4[@overall_deduction])
2) how do I differentiate which one I wish to display, ie, the one with the application code of 'A'?

If your context node is <market>, then it satisfies the second xsl:if condition. But the <market> node doesn't have an attribute called overall_deduction, so nothing is displayed. Every time you write a relative path expression, you need to be aware what the context node is.

And please don't use disable-output-escaping for something as trivial as outputting a NBSP character. You're severely damaging the portability and reusability of your code, and you can produce a NBSP character quite easily with

<xsl:text>#xa0;</xsl:text>

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

Thanks for your reply Michael,

the contect node is market but using

<xsl:if test="rule4[@application_code='A']">
  <xsl:text>Rule 4</xsl:text>
  <xsl:value-of select="rule4[@overall_deduction]"/>
  <xsl:text> All Bets</xsl:text>
</xsl:if>

still shows nothing. Pardon my ignorance, its bound to be something simple ;)

This:

<xsl:value-of select="rule4[@overall_deduction]"/>

displays the string-value of the first rule4 element that has an @overall_deduction attribute.

So there are two errors: (a) you want to display the value of the attribute, not the containing element (which has empty content), and (b) you don't want the value of the first rule4 element, you want the one that has @application_code='A' (I assume).

One way to do this is

<xsl:for-each select="rule4[@application_code='A']">
  <xsl:text>Rule 4</xsl:text>
  <xsl:value-of select="@overall_deduction"/>
  <xsl:text> All Bets</xsl:text>
</xsl:for-each>


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