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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T01:18:46+00:00

I have question about XSLT1.0. The task is to write out in HTML all

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I have question about XSLT1.0. The task is to write out in HTML all books written by given authors only by using XSL templates. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <books>
        <book author="herbert">
            <name>Dune</name>
        </book>
        <book author="herbert">
            <name>Chapterhouse: Dune</name>
        </book>
        <book author="pullman">
            <name>Lyras's Oxford</name>
        </book>
        <book author="pratchett">
            <name>I Shall Wear Midnight</name>
        </book>
        <book author="pratchett">
            <name>Going Postal</name>
        </book>
        <author id="pratchett"><name>Terry Pratchett</name></author>
        <author id="herbert"><name>Frank Herbert</name></author>
        <author id="pullman"><name>Philip Pullman</name></author>
    </books>

So far I have this solution. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
    <xsl:output method="html"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <head/>
            <body>
                <table border="1">
                    <xsl:apply-templates select="//author"/>
                </table>
            </body>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="author">
        <tr>
            <td>
                <xsl:value-of select="name/text()"/>
            </td>
            <td>
                <xsl:value-of select="@id"/>
            </td>
            <td>
                <xsl:apply-templates select="/books/book[@id=@author]"/>
                --previous XPath does not work properly, it should choose only those books that are written by the given author (that this template matches)
            </td>
        </tr>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="book">
        <xsl:value-of select="name/text()"/>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

There is a problem though, explained in the comment.

Thank you Martin and Marzipan – it works now. There is one more thing. What if I wanted to have the book titles for each authors separated by commas? I propose this solution, but is there more elegant way to achieve this?

…

<xsl:apply-templates select="/books/book[current()/@id=@author][not(position()=last())]" mode="notLast"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="/books/book[current()/@id=@author][last()]"/>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </xsl:template>
        <xsl:template match="book">
            <xsl:value-of select="name/text()"/>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template match="book" mode="notLast">
            <xsl:value-of select="name/text()"/>
            <xsl:text> , </xsl:text>
        </xsl:template>

    </xsl:stylesheet>

I just realized my question has been already answered by Marzipan. Quesion is solved then.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You want <xsl:apply-templates select="/books/book[current()/@id=@author]"/> or better yet a key (as a child of the xsl:stylesheet element):

    <xsl:key name="book-by-author" match="books/book" use="@author"/>

    and then <xsl:apply-templates select="key('book-by-author', @id)"/>.

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