Re: Not grokking keys...

Kay Michael wrote:
> 
> > Anyone care to explain, or give an example of the usage of
> > keys? The spec description of keys just isn't clicking wiht me.
> >
> I'm glad I'm not the only one!
> 
> The match and name attributes are fairly obvious:
> 
> xsl:key(match="Employee|Contractor" name="SSN") says I want to be able to
> find Employee and Contractor elements using their SSN attribute. (It seems a
> key has to be an attribute, we can't find things using the value of child
> elements).
> 
> It's the "use" attribute that's thoroughly obscure. I've stared at it but
> can't see why it's there, let alone why it's mandatory.

It's the "use" attribute not the "name" attributes that tells you what
to use to find elements.  The "name" attribute tells you what xsl:key
definitions to use for a particular keyref() or key() function call.

Suppose you have

<Employee>
<SSN>6789</SSN>
<Name>Michael Kay</Name>
<ManagedBy>1234</ManagedBy>
</Employee>

<Employee>
<SSN>1234</SSN>
<Name>John Smith</Name>
</Employee>

then you might do:

<xsl:key match="Employee|Contractor" name="people" use="SSN"/>

<xsl:template match="ManagedBy">
 <xsl:value-of select="keyref('people',.)/Name"/>
</xsl:template>

James


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