Question

I have an XML with multiple nodes with similar data in each. I want to delete a specific attribute from each node (USER:IPADDRESS). I’ve figured out how to chain together a number of elements using ors, simply leaving out the User=”{@User}” match so it doesn’t show up in the results:

XSL Snippet:

<xsl:template match="Creation | Test | Assignment | Modification | Repair | Termination">
<Creation CommitID="{@CommitID}" Date="{@Date}" BoardID="{@BoardID}">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</Creation>
</xsl:template>

Unsurprisingly, all of the node names after “Creation” get re-named to Creation because that’s what I’m telling it to do. How do I pass in the various matches so they’re applied in the proper order in the results? I know I can do a brute force way using identical XSL statements for each of the various matches (that’s how I did it the first time), but there must be a more elegant method, it’s just evading me. I have millions & millions of lines of XML to process and this is just the first of many transforms I’m going to have to make.

I’m using msxsl V4.0 on a Win7 box to do my transforms if that’s of any consequence.

XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<BoardDatabase>
<Board_Data BoardID="1035">
    <Creation CommitID="12b" Date="2007-12-07T15:43:51" BoardID="1035" User="CSAGAN:192.168.1.177">
        <BoardDrawing>3B</BoardDrawing>
        <AssemblyDrawing>2010F</AssemblyDrawing>
        <Notes>PO Num 1959</Notes>
    </Creation>
    <Test CommitID="117" Date="2007-12-10T10:39:43" BoardID="1035" User="CSAGAN:192.168.1.183">
        <ElectricalTestData Result="FAIL" Version="IMM STD REVF">
            <AutomatedTest ReportVersion="1.0">
                <TestSetup>
                    <TestAppBuildDate>Dec 07 2007</TestAppBuildDate>
                    <VersionPath>c:\tests\versions\v12.txt</VersionPath>
                    <VersionNumber>1.2</VersionNumber>
                    <OperatorName>CSAGAN</OperatorName>
                    <StationID>PC-191-NDGrasse</StationID>
                    <JigSN>12345</JigSN>
                    <JigAssembly>42</JigAssembly>
                    <TestStartTime>2007-12-10 10:34:17</TestStartTime>
                </TestSetup>
            </AutomatedTest>
        </ElectricalTestData>
    </Test>
    <Assignment CommitID="1c1f" User="JRandi:192.168.1.162" Date="2008-09-30T07:36:52" BoardID="1035">
        <Notes>Boardset failed etest twice, no problem log entry/repair attempts made.</Notes>
    </Assignment>
    <Modification CommitID="2bb7" User="JRandi:192.168.1.162" Date="2009-03-11T13:31:21" BoardID="1035">
        <AssemblyDrawing>2001G</AssemblyDrawing>
        <Notes>Cornelius upgraded boardset to rev. G</Notes>
    </Modification>
</Board_Data>
</BoardDatabase>

XSL:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

<xsl:template match="Creation | Test | Assignment | Modification | Repair | Termination">
<Creation CommitID="{@CommitID}" Date="{@Date}" BoardID="{@BoardID}">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</Creation>
</xsl:template>

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

Latest XSL using @DevNull’s solution that doubles size of original file:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

<!-- Answer from Stack Overflow that only strips out the IP Address from the User attribute. -->
<xsl:template match="@User">
  <xsl:attribute name="User">
    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before(.,':')"/>
  </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>

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

Latest XSL from @Dimitre’s solution that takes a very long time to process (still running after more than 30 minutes, but file is still growing):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
  <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

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

 <xsl:template match=
  "*[contains('|Creation|Test|Assignment|Modification|Repair|Termination|',concat('|', name(), '|'))
]/@user"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 1

Try changing your template to this:

<xsl:template match="Creation|Test|Assignment|Modification|Repair|Termination">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="@*[not(name()='User')]|node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

You’ll notice it looks a lot like your identity template with a predicate added to @*.

Also, if you wanted to strip all User attributes no matter what the element was, you could use this template instead:

<xsl:template match="@User"/>

Here’s one more way (only stripping from Creation and Test for brevity)

<xsl:template match="@User[..[self::Creation or self::Test]]"/>

---

Answer to comment

Use this template instead:

<xsl:template match="@User">
    <xsl:attribute name="User">
        <xsl:value-of select="substring-before(.,':')"/>
    </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>