Error 'Cannot select a node here' in for-each with global variables

raks · February 20th, 2014, 04:24 AM

Hello,

My stylesheet failed to compile for this error: XPTY0020: Cannot select a node here: the context item is an atomic value at this line:

Code:

<xsl:when test="$event[substring-before(start/datetime, 'T')=$dateJour]">

Here is all the code of the template: http://pastebin.com/fmPUHGpR. The error is on line 20.

Yesterday, I search on a lot of websites and forums who says to put a global variable outside the for-each. $event is a global variable. I try to put event/start/datetime in a global variable but I still have the error.

The processor is XSLT 2.0

Could you please help me?

mhkay · February 20th, 2014, 05:55 AM

Because you didn't supply a complete self-contained stylesheet I had to make modifications to prevent spurious errors. After these modifications I got an error different from yours, but similar: it objected to the line

[code]
<xsl:value-of select="/workfile/query/consultant[@calendar-id=$calendar-id]/@code" />
[code]

saying

Error on line 166 of test.xsl:
XPTY0020: Leading '/' cannot select the root node of the tree containing the context item:
the context item is an atomic value

I fix this by replacing /workfile/query with $query.

I now get a similar error a few lines further on, with the code

Code:

<xsl:value-of select="id" />

I don't know how to fix this, because I don't know where you are expecting to find the "id" element. So I deleted the line, and it now compiles OK.

It seems to me that you haven't really understood the XSLT concept of the context item. When you do a for-each, or apply-templates, each node or item you are processing becomes the context item. When you use a path expression, it is relative to the context item. When you do for-each select="tokenize(...)", then inside the for-each the context item is a string, and you can't use a path expression that is relative to a string (it has to be a node). The solution is to bind a variable to the relevant node outside the for-each, and use that variable at the start of your paths. It doesn't have to be a global variable, of course.

raks · February 20th, 2014, 06:24 AM

Hello,

I am using XSLT since one week and see your name in a lot of websites and forums so i'm very glad to have an answer of you.

I was blocked because when I put the line

Code:

<xsl:when test="$event[substring-before(start/datetime, 'T')=$dateJour]">

in comment, the stylesheet compiles.

So now, I replace all the /workfile/query by the $query and put in comment the lines

Code:

<xsl:value-of select="id" />

And now, it works fine and I have the good result.

Thank you very much!