Whats the work around?

aaronmuslim · March 26th, 2008, 11:03 AM

How would I go about to use the name of and XML element for the value of an attribute in an attribute-set? Because XSLT isn't like the java I'm used to, I can't just create a variable and change the value based on ".", could someone please advise? thanks...

<xsl:template match="/root">
<xsl:for-each select"*">
  <xsl:element name="newElement" use-attribute-set="newElementAtts">
   <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:element>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:attribute-set name="newElementAtts">
<xsl:attribute name="theName">(how do I get the name of the calling element here?)</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:attribute-set>

samjudson · March 26th, 2008, 11:11 AM

An attribute set is a fixed set of attributes which I don't believe have any concept of context.

A similar concept might be accomplished by either using a named template or template modes:

Code:

<xsl:template match="/root">
  <xsl:for-each> 
    <xsl:element name="newElement">
     <xsl:call-template name="defaultAttributes"/>
     <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="defaultAttributes">
  <xsl:attribute name="theName"><xsl:value-of select="name()"/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>

However, if you are only doing the one attribute then this might be a much quicker way of doing it:

Code:

<xsl:template match="/root">
  <xsl:for-each> 
    <newElement theName="{name()}">
     <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </newElement>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/

aaronmuslim · March 26th, 2008, 12:07 PM

Excellent. I think what I was looking for was the "name()" command/function/whatever....

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question I will try your examples or variations of them ....

mhkay · March 26th, 2008, 12:13 PM

<xsl:attribute-set name="newElementAtts">
  <xsl:attribute name="theName">
    <xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
  </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:attribute-set>

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

mhkay · March 26th, 2008, 12:27 PM

>An attribute set is a fixed set of attributes which I don't believe have any concept of context.

Actually, it's rather unusual to take advantage of the fact, but the context item is defined when evaluating an attribute set, so it is possible to construct attributes whose value is context-dependent.

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

samjudson · March 26th, 2008, 04:10 PM

So much for my believe system :(

/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/