Re: [xsl] How do I check to see if any of my descendants contain a certain value?

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Sayre wrote:
> I am trying to check me XML to see if any of the descendants contain a
> certian value.
>
> <snip />
>
> I can have unlimited Child Types in each type.  When I get to a
> certain type, I want to check and see if this node or any descendants
> of this node has a value of 0 for the inUse node.
>
> This is what I tried but it did not work:
>
>  <xsl:if test="descendant-or-self::inUse = 0">

Change it to the following and you should be fine (you are looking for 
string, not for a number):
<xsl:if test="descendant-or-self::inUse = '0'" >

Depending on what you are after, you may want to remove the xsl:if and 
change it to something like this with apply-templates on the place of 
your xsl:if:

<xsl:template match="node-to-test[descendant-or-self::inUse = '0' ]">
  ...
</

which will leave the thinking about order and logic to the processor. 
Also, you can change descendant-or-self:: to .// (yes, the dot is 
supposed to be there, otherwise the search will be done from the root).

That brings me to another thing. If you all you need is a stylesheet 
that outputs something when a certain child has a certain value, you may 
as well do this instead:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"; 
version="1.0">
  <xsl:template match="inUse[.='0']">FOUND<xsl:template>
  <xsl:template match="text()" />
</xsl:stylesheet>

The last match is to disable the default stylesheet for text nodes, the 
first one matches when your criterion is met. In XSLT 2.0 you can put 
this criterion in a parameter and then you have effectively created an 
XML search tool (by setting the parameter on the commandline) ;)

Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma