Question

How can I select a specific node with an unique ID and return the entire node as xml.

<xml>
<library>
<book id='1'>
<title>firstTitle</title>
<author>firstAuthor</author>
</book>
<book id='2'>
<title>secondTitle</title>
<author>secondAuthor</author>
</book>
<book id='3'>
<title>thirdTitle</title>
<author>thirdAuthor</author>
</book>
</library>
</xml>

In this case I would like to return book with id=’3′, so it will look something like this:

<book id='3'>
<title>thirdTitle</title>
<author>thirdAuthor</author>
</book>

Answer 1

This XSLT 1.0 style-sheet …

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="*/*/book[@id='3']" />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="@*|node()">
  <xsl:copy>
   <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" />
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

… will transform your sample input document to the stated sample output document