Beginner's XSLT question: Select node based on a value elsewhere in the XML structure

Question

--edited for clarity (hopefully)

I have an XML file that looks something like this:

<questionBlock>
    <responses>
      . . .
      <response>
        <degree>1</degree>
        <instdegree>1</instdegree>
      </response>
      . . .
   </responses>
   <question>
      <variable>degree</variable>
      <text>Please select a degree or credential you have pursued.</text>
      <responses>
        <response>
          <label>High School Diploma</label>
          <value>1</value>
        </response>
        <response>
          <label>Certificate</label>
          <value>2</value>
        </response>
      </responses>
      . . .
   </question>
</questionBlock>

A subset of the XSLT looks like this:

 . . .
<xsl:for-each select="responses/response">
   <xsl:variable name="paddedCount" select="concat('00',position())"/>
   <xsl:variable name="s" select="substring($paddedCount,string-length($paddedCount)-1,string-length($paddedCount))"/>
   <xsl:variable name="degree" select="degree" />
. . .

In addition to selecting the value of the degree (1), I also want to be able to select the "High School Diploma" based on that value, but I haven't been able to think through the XPath to do this in the general case (e.g., if degree equals 2).

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

What do you mean by "select" and "look at"? Do you mean you want to filter by the label element, while returning the value from the degree element? What is the parent element of condition and responses? — Welbog
– Welbog, Commented Oct 20, 2009 at 18:45
Sorry that the question was initially obscure (it made sense in my head as I wrote it). I really need to be able to make the decision based on the value of /question/response, not just the position. — Jason Francis
– Jason Francis, Commented Oct 20, 2009 at 19:14
My solution does noot work for your problem? It is not based on the node position — Gregoire
– Gregoire, Commented Oct 20, 2009 at 19:22
I think you should re-clarify again, this is still confusing. You are in a /questionBlock/responses/response and want to select <label>High School Diploma</label> because that's the one with the same <value> as the current <degree>? — Tomalak
– Tomalak, Commented Oct 23, 2009 at 16:10

Gregoire · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-20 18:48:06Z

2

The xpath: ../../responses[response=current()]/label

answered Oct 20, 2009 at 18:48

Gregoire

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Tomalak · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-23 16:27:35Z

2

EDIT: I guess you mean something like this?

<xsl:for-each select="responses/response">
  <xsl:variable name="degree" select="degree" />    
  <xsl:variable name="degree-response" select="
    ../question[variable = 'degree']/responses/response[value = $degree]
  " />
  <xsl:value-of select="$degree-response/label" />
</xsl:for-each>

Really, you should try to refactor all of this to <xsl:apply-templates> instead of <xsl:for-each>. The for-each sucks in more ways than one, and it makes things harder than they should be. See: "Using xsl:for-each is almost always wrong"

For-each has it's uses, but all "regular" processing should be done through apply-templates.

Original version of the answer (for reference only, since OP has modified the question):

When the context node is <degree>1</degree>:

parent::condition/following-sibling::responses[1]/response[1]/label

or, shorter:

../following-sibling::responses[1]/response[1]/label

edited Oct 23, 2009 at 16:27

answered Oct 20, 2009 at 18:47

Tomalak

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1 Comment

Jason Francis Over a year ago

Thanks, Tomalak. You're quite right, of course, about avoiding for-each. The XSLT was written by a junior programmer (without any experience with functional programming), and I needed to fix it quickly to solve a problem. I really need to go back and refactor the whole thing.

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