Re: [xsl] copying attributes to all child nodes

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2004-01-26 11:04 +0000, Terence Mac Goff wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out a way to select a node based on an attribute,

A predicate is used to qualify the node test of a location path expression, 
but you don't say which nodes you are addressing before filtering.  Perhaps 
you need to address all the children of your context looking for such a node?

  select="*[@attributeX='123456']"

Then again, you say "select", but do you mean "match"?  Do you want all of 
the nodes copied verbatim *except* those nodes that happen to have an 
attribute, and process those differently?  I'll assume that, which means 
you need:

  match="*[@attributeX='123456']"

> then copy that attribute to all children of the node i.e.

You've phrased your requirement in a way that doesn't mesh with the 
processing model of XSLT.  It sounds more like a DOM process the way you've 
worded it.  Also, your example seems to have all of the descendants of the 
result with the attribute, not just the children, so I'll assume you meant 
to say descendants.

If you worded your requirement as "copy all of the descendants of the node 
including a copy of the given attribute for each", that would be more in 
line with the processing model.

Remember that an XSLT stylesheet is just a set of construction rules for 
the result tree, and that you must express your solution as just that: 
constructing a result tree from the source tree.

An example is below that you can work from.  Upon detection of an element 
that is special, the remaining construction of that element and its 
descendants is different than just a simple copy: each element adds to its 
list of specified attributes a copy of the closest ancestral specification 
of the special attribute.  Those elements that are not special are just 
copied to the result tree.

I hope this helps.

......................... Ken

t:\ftemp>type terence.xml
<top>
<top.level.node attributeX="123456">
  <nextelement attributeXYZ="654321">
     <next2element> this is some text</next2element>
     <next2element> this is some more text </next2element>
  </nextelement>
</top.level.node>
<top.level.node attributeX="123457">
  <nextelement attributeXYZ="654321">
     <next2element> this is some text</next2element>
     <next2element> this is some more text </next2element>
  </nextelement>
</top.level.node>
</top>

t:\ftemp>type terence.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
                version="1.0">

<!--copy all nodes that aren't special-->
<xsl:template match="@*|node()">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<!--detect an element that is special-->
<xsl:template match="*[@attributeX='123456']">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="." mode="addattr"/>
</xsl:template>

<!--when constructing the tree for all descendants,
    add closest ancestral attribute-->
<xsl:template match="*" mode="addattr">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
    <xsl:copy-of select="ancestor-or-self::*[@attributeX][1]/@attributeX"/>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="node()" mode="addattr"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

t:\ftemp>saxon terence.xml terence.xsl
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><top>
<top.level.node attributeX="123456">
  <nextelement attributeXYZ="654321" attributeX="123456">
     <next2element attributeX="123456"> this is some text</next2element>
     <next2element attributeX="123456"> this is some more text </next2element>
  </nextelement>
</top.level.node>
<top.level.node attributeX="123457">
  <nextelement attributeXYZ="654321">
     <next2element> this is some text</next2element>
     <next2element> this is some more text </next2element>
  </nextelement>
</top.level.node>
</top>
t:\ftemp>


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