<xsl:template match="//Person[@PersonID='3'] >
...
</xsl:template>
But what if the unique identifier for Person nodes is a GUID?
<xsl:template match="//Person[@PersonID='
{4C22F4FA-0C4A-4FCF-85DF-F9B7A902244E}'] >
...
</xsl:template>
- What GUID format is used in the XML?
- Bracket notation?
- Hyphenated?
- Mixtures?
- With which casing are the alphabetic portion of the hex values stored in the XML?
- Upper case?
- Lower case?
- Mixture?
As you can see from just these two items, the matrix of problems expands rapidly. In the particular case I am dealing with, I am able to control format (bracketed, hyphenated), but not case. I have had to assume that case will be either upper or lower, but that mixed case will not occur (a fairly reasonable assumption since the GUIDs are not manually edited; for code to render mixed case it has to do extra work). So, my XSLT file finds the appropriate node by this method:
<xsl:param name='FindThisGuid'>
<xsl:variable name='UCaseGuid' select='translate($FindThisGuid, "abcdef", "ABCDEF")'>
<xsl:variable name='LCaseGuid' select='translate($FindThisGuid, "ABCDEF", "abcdef")'>
<xsl:template match='Person[@PersonID = $UCaseGuid) Person[@PersonID = ($LCaseGuid)]>
...
</xsl:template>
Now the Good News: XSLT 2.0 will hopefully resolve this issue by promoting GUID to a first class citizen (actual type).
