Re: [xsl] Specify/determine element's "logical" parent

[Jeni Tennison <jeni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John,

> Is this possible and/or a bad idea?  I read that XPath statements
> cannot be dynamic, so I imagine I have to use parentid attributes
> rather than parentpath, then somehow map the ID to an actual node;
> does that make sense? I also see the potential for infinite
> recursion; any suggestions on that topic would be appreciated.

It would certainly be easiest to use the parentid attribute. To do that, 
all you have to do is set up a key that indexes the <item> elements 
based on their id attribute:

<xsl:key name="items" match="item" use="@id" />

and to get the parent of a particular item, use the key() function with 
the parentid attribute:

  key('items', @parentid)

Parsing XPath using XSLT is possible but difficult. You're probably best 
off using an extension dyn:evaluate() function to do so. If you're using 
a small subset of XPath then you can alternatively use recursive 
templates to step through the path and parse it as you go. See my reply 
in the thread "generate-id for identical elements" for an example of how 
that might be done.

I'm not sure where the infinite recursion might occur, unless you want 
to get the parent of the parent once you find it?

Cheers,

Jeni
--
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com