Question

I have some XML which contains records and sub records, like this:

<data>
    <record jsxid="id0x0b60fec0" ID="12429070" Created="2008-10-21T03:00:00.0000000-07:00">
        <record jsxid="id0x0b60ff10" string="101"/>
        <record jsxid="id0x0e64d8e8" string="63"/>
        <record jsxid="id0x2fd83f08" string="Y"/>
    </record>
    <record jsxid="id0x0b60fec0" ID="12429070" Created="2008-10-21T03:00:00.0000000-07:00">
        <record jsxid="id0x0b60ff10" string="102"/>
        <record jsxid="id0x0e64d8e8" string="77"/>
        <record jsxid="id0x2fd83f08" string="Y"/>
    </record>       
<data>

I need to transform it so that the string attribute of the sub records are brought up into the parent record as consecutively numbered attributes and then discarded, like this:

<data>
    <record jsxid="id0x0b60fec0" ID="12429070" Created="2008-10-21T03:00:00.0000000-07:00" 1="101" 2="63" 3="Y"/>
    <record jsxid="id0x0b60fec0" ID="12429070" Created="2008-10-21T03:00:00.0000000-07:00" 1="102" 2="77" 3="Y"/>
<data>

The number of sub-records is arbitrary across documents but remains static within the same document.

Would someone be so kind as to point the way to an XSLT solution? Many thanks.

Answer 1

Here’s a complete solution:

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

  <!-- By default, recursively copy all nodes unchanged -->
  <xsl:template match="@* | node()">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- But don't process any children of <record> (such as whitespace)... -->
  <xsl:template match="record/node()"/>

  <!-- ...except for doubly-nested records;
       convert them to attributes, named according to position -->
  <xsl:template match="record/record" priority="1">
    <xsl:variable name="pos">
      <xsl:number/>
    </xsl:variable>
    <xsl:attribute name="r{$pos}">
      <xsl:value-of select="@string"/>
    </xsl:attribute>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Note that I changed the name of your attributes to “r1”, “r2”, etc., because XML doesn’t allow you to start a name with a number.