Question

I’m having trouble creating a global variable in my XSL 1.0 stylesheet. I want to create the variable from the value of an XML tag that is in the XML I’m trying to transform. Here is what my XML looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>

<config name="test report" xmlns="http://www.example.com/CONFIG">

    <the_one_i_want>1000</the_one_i_want>

    <!-- lots of other stuff -->

</config>

And here is what my XSL looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

    <xsl:output method="html"/>

    <xsl:variable name="normal_global_variable">100</xsl:variable><!-- This works fine -->
    <xsl:variable name="variable_from_xml"><xsl:value-of select="/config/the_one_i_want/value"/></xsl:variable><!-- This does not work -->

    <!-- lots of other stuff -->

</xsl:stylesheet>

So I would expect that variable_from_xml would have a value of 1000, but it does not. What am I doing wrong?

P.S. The XML tag named the_one_i_want is unique and only appears once in my XML.

Answer 1

The problem is one of namespaces. The <the_one_i_want> element that you’re after is bound to the http://www.example.com/CONFIG namespace (which you’ve already defined in your XSLT).

Therefore, simply change this:

<xsl:variable name="variable_from_xml">
  <xsl:value-of select="/config/the_one_i_want/value"/>
</xsl:variable>

to this:

<xsl:variable name="variable_from_xml" select="/CONFIG:config/CONFIG:the_one_i_want"/>

or, even more simply:

<xsl:variable name="variable_from_xml" select="/*/CONFIG:the_one_i_want"/>