Question

I have a XML file that looks like this:

<container>
<bugs>
    <bug id="b1">
        <reporter>Tom</reporter>
        ...
    </bug>
    <bug id="b2">
        <reporter>Jane</reporter>
        ...
    </bug>
</bugs>
<users>
    <user>
        <userid>10</userid>
        <username>Tom</username>
    </user>
    <user>
        <userid>5</userid>
        <username>Jane</username>
    </user>
</users>
</container>

The endresult should be:

<items>
    <item>
        <bugid>b1</bugid>
        <author id="10">Tom</author>
    </item>
    <item>
        <bugid>b2</bugid>
        <author id="5">Jane</author>
    </item>
</items>

Problem: I can’t get the comparison correct for the id lookup.

I assumed it would be like this:

<xsl:template match="bug">
....
    <xsl:element name="author">
        <xsl:attribute name="id">
            <xsl:value-of select="//users/user[username=reporter]/userid"/>
        </xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:element>
....
</xsl:template>

But this returns an empty id ( id=”” ).

<xsl:value-of select="//users/user[username='Tom']/userid"/>

returns 10
and

<xsl:value-of select="reporter"/>

returns Tom.

I don’t see what’s wrong here.

Answer 1

//users/user[username=reporter]/userid

looks for a user containing equal username and reporter elements. It does not search for the reporter in your bug.

You can get this to work by binding the reporter’s name to a variable first:

<xsl:element name="author">
  <xsl:variable name="reporter" select="string(reporter)"/>
  <xsl:attribute name="id">
    <xsl:value-of select="//users/user[username=$reporter]/userid"/>
  </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:element>