Question

In my xslt template I am having a for-each statement. In that for-each I am making different conditions. I want to have there a variable of string type which shall contain class attributes that will be assigned to a <li>.

As I am new to xslt please provide me some examples or how can I achieve what I want to do.

Here is a bit of my code so you can see what I am taking about:

<xsl:if test="count($currentPage/ancestor-or-self::* [@level=$level]/* [@isDoc and string(umbracoNaviHide) != '1']) &gt; '0'">
    <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/ancestor-or-self::* [@level=$level]/* [@isDoc and string(umbracoNaviHide) != '1']">
        <li><xsl:attribute name="class">
                topNavigLi
                page<xsl:number value="position()" format="1" />
                <xsl:if test="@nodeName='Network' ">
                    has_submenu network
                </xsl:if>
            </xsl:attribute>
            <xsl:if test="@id = $currentPage/@id">
                <xsl:attribute name="class">
                    current topNavigLi
                    page<xsl:number value="position()" format="1" />
                </xsl:attribute>
            </xsl:if>
            <xsl:if test="position() = last()">
                <xsl:attribute name="class">
                    last topNavigLi
                    page<xsl:number value="position()" format="1" />
                </xsl:attribute>
            </xsl:if>

            <xsl:if test="@id = $currentPage/@id and position() = last()">
                <xsl:attribute name="class">
                    current last topNavigLi
                    page<xsl:number value="position()" format="1" />
                </xsl:attribute>
            </xsl:if>

It would be much elegant to have a variable and than concatenate to it while doing tests.
I have tried like this but returns nothing.

<xsl:variable name="li_class" select="page"> </xsl:variable>

<xsl:attribute name="class">
    <xsl:value-of select="li_class" /> 
</xsl:attribute>

Answer 1

After reading in the meanwhile I found out(something that however I knew, mostly) that:

The fact that you need to modify an shows that you are
not thinking in XSLT.

XSLT is a functional programming language, which, among other things
means that there is no way one can change a variable. Variables in a
functional programming language by definition are immutable.
Source: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/xmlandnetfx/thread/2bf7d238-92d2-4453-a683-4bfb0c667795

So I have changed my logic a little:
I put all conditions within xsl attribute like this:

 <xsl:if test="count($currentPage/ancestor-or-self::* [@level=$level]/* [@isDoc and string(umbracoNaviHide) != '1']) &gt; '0'">
            <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/ancestor-or-self::* [@level=$level]/* [@isDoc and string(umbracoNaviHide) != '1']">
                <li>
                    <xsl:attribute name="class">
                        page topNavigLi page<xsl:number value="position()" format="1" />
                        <xsl:if test="@id = $currentPage/@id">
                            current 
                        </xsl:if>
                        <xsl:if test="position() = last()">
                            last
                        </xsl:if>
                        <xsl:if test="@nodeName='Network' ">
                            has_submenu network
                        </xsl:if>
                    </xsl:attribute>

So no need of extra temp var.