Question

ok i have this xml

<roots>
<root>
    <name>first</name>
    <item type='test'><something>A</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>B</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>C</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>A</something></item>
    <item type='other'><something>A</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>B</something></item>
    <item type='other'><something>D</something></item>

</root>
<root>
<name>second</name>
    <item type='test'><something>E</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>B</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>F</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>A</something></item>
    <item type='other'><something>A</something></item>
    <item type='test'><something>B</something></item>
    <item type='other'><something>D</something></item>

</root>

</roots>

now i need to get the unique values of each root node so far i have

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

  <xsl:output indent="yes" method="text"/>
  <xsl:key name="item-by-value" match="something" use="."/>
  <xsl:key name="rootkey" match="root" use="name"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:for-each select="key('rootkey','second')">
      <xsl:for-each select="item/something">
        <xsl:if test="generate-id() = generate-id(key('item-by-value', normalize-space(.)))">
          <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </xsl:if>
      </xsl:for-each> 
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

if i use “First” as the key to get only the first root i get a good result ABCD

how ever if i use “second” i only get EF but i need the result to be ABDFE

Answer 1

I get EBFAD with a slight modification of your xsl. The key is that if you’re using the key to find the first node with this content under the given root element, then the key needs to be specific to the root element. I changed the xsl:key to:

<xsl:key name="item-by-value" match="something"
 use="concat(normalize-space(.), ' ', generate-id(./ancestor::root))"/>

Then the xsl:if test becomes:

<xsl:if test="generate-id() = generate-id(key('item-by-value', 
                  concat(normalize-space(.), ' ', generate-id(./ancestor::root))))">