Question

I can’t find a reason why the following does not work.

If I have a document that looks like

<mydocroot>
<request>
   <key>Ham</key>
</request>
<node>
   <data alias='Ham' id='27'>Some value</data>
   <data alias='Eggs' id='14'>Greenish</data>
   <data alias='Condiment' id='32'>Salt and pepper</data>
   ...
</node>
</mydocroot>

and an xsl template that looks like

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:value-of select="/mydocroot/node/data[@alias=string(/mydocroot/request/key)]" />
</xsl:template>

prints nothing.

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:value-of select="/mydocroot/node/data[@alias='Ham']" />
</xsl:template>

prints “Some value” as expected.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Edit:

I’m actually not 100% positive what the underlying document I’m working with looks like, but I do know that, to continue with this example,

<xsl:value-of select="/mydocroot/request/key" /> <!-- prints "Ham" -->

works.

Should I be able to match an attribute value to a node value?

Answer 1

If you start an XPath expression using a “/”, it indicates that you are starting from the root node of the document, but the root element is “mydocroot”, so you need to include that in your XPath.

<xsl:value-of select="/mydocroot/node/data[@alias=string(/mydocroot/request/key)]" />