Question

XSL:

<xsl:if test=".[foo or @bar]">
    something
</xsl:if>

1. is it testing that if target is with ‘foo’ tag name or has a ‘bar’ attribute?

2. it works only in IE, I’m wondering if there is an error. What is the equivalent sentence but works cross-browser?

Answer 1

<xsl:if test=".[foo or @bar]">     
  something 
</xsl:if>

In XSLT 1.0 this is syntactically invalid and produces an error.

In XSLT 2.0 this is equivalent to:

 <xsl:if test="foo or @bar">     
   something 
 </xsl:if>

The expression:

foo or @bar

evaluates to true() exactly when the context node (current node) has a child element named foo or the context node has an attribute named bar (or both).

Otherwise this expression evaluates to false().

Therefore, the above code snippet means: If either of these conditions is true: the current node has a child element named foo or the current node has an attribute named bar — then output the string “something”