Re: [xsl] Getting variable yet most immediate parentNode

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wendell Piez wrote:
> > <xsl:apply-templates select=".//answers" />
>
> Actually this should be "ancestor::*/answers", or 
> "ancestor::*[answers][1]/answers", shouldn't it?
>
> ".//answers" will search the subtree below the current node, rather 
> than look up the tree.
>
> "ancestor::*/answers" will select answers elements from all ancestors; 
> "ancestor::*[answers][1]/answers" will select only the closest one. If 
> you think the latter expression is too opaque, you could also write
>
> (ancestor::*/answers)[last()]
>
> ... and then try to explain that. :-)

Awe, yes, you are right of course! I always tell myself not to send out 
technical messages in the middle of the night, even more so, not when 
there's some beer around. But looking again now at his code, Steve 
constructs one <div> element for each option element which is a child of 
<questions> element. Which is interesting, because in his supplied 
source, there isn't any at that level:

 <questions>
     <answers />
     <question>
        <answer>
            <option>True</option>
            <option>False</option>
        </answer>
     </question>
 </questions>


which means that <xsl:template match="option" mode="q">... will never be 
triggered by this snippet:

   <xsl:template match="questions">
       <xsl:apply-templates mode="q" select="option" />
       <SNIP />
   </xsl:template>


Following up the analysis, the <xsl:template match="answers" > contains 
an xsl:if test="option" which can never be true either, considering the 
sample source, the xsl:if encompassing the complete code block:

   <xsl:template match="answers">
       <xsl:param name="qKey" />
       <xsl:if test="option">
   .........


Steve, if you rewrite statements like that as this one above as:

   <xsl:template match="answers[option]">
      ....

meaning: without the xsl:if completely, it will do the same and better. 
You would benefit a great deal for clarity and you would much clearer 
see and find where your code goes wrong. The way it is now it probably 
doesn't output at all what you want. While rewriting, you will find the 
problems and you can more easily fix them.


Wendell, considering the possible intent of Steve to wrap all output 
inside one <div>, it is probably better if he does go back to using the 
// syntax, but not in the way I proposed, but more like this (assuming 
that the match="option" was a mistake from Steve, it doesn't even have 
an @name, I replace it here with "section"):

<xsl:template match="section">
  <div>
     <span class="two"><label>
          <xsl:value-of select="(@name | .)[1]" />      <!-- xslt 1.0 
syntax now -->
      </label></span>
      <xsl:apply-template select=".//answers" />
  </div>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="answers[option]" >
    <select>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="option" />
    </select>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="option">
   <option><xsl:value-of select="(@name | .)[1]" />
</xsl:template>

etc. etc. This roughly does the same as the whole structure that Steve 
posted, but I left out the details (and some late-hour mistakes are 
probably there: finders keepers). Steve, as you can see, you don't need 
to test for the existence of a node before you use it. Just use 
apply-templates, it does the "if"-ing for you.

Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma