You can select the attribute as

//inactiveTab[@name='Email']/@ID

and you can save it in a variable (if you need to) as

<xsl:variable name="id" select="//inactiveTab[@name='Email']"/>

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Johnson [mailto:artpunx@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 30 November 2007 15:23
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Getting and using an xml attribute
> 
> Hello...
> 
> Is it possible to select an attribute, take its value and 
> re-use it elsewhere?
> 
> I have some xml...the ID attribute value changes depending on 
> user, but the name attribute always stays the same. So it may 
> look like this....
> 
> <navigation>
> 	<inactiveTab ID="1" name="Home"/>
>         <inactiveTab ID="2" name="Away"/>
>         <inactiveTab ID="3" name="Foo"/>
>         <inactiveTab ID="4" name="Bar"/> </navigation>
> 
> ....or this....
> 
> <navigation>
> 	<inactiveTab ID="100" name="Home"/>
>         <inactiveTab ID="200" name="Away"/>
>         <inactiveTab ID="300" name="Foo"/>
>         <inactiveTab ID="400" name="Bar"/> </navigation>
> 
> Behind the scenes, urls are created automatically that 
> incorporate the ID....
> 
> ...inactiveTabID=1&uP_sparam=mode&mode=view
> ...inactiveTabID=2&uP_sparam=mode&mode=view
> ...inactiveTabID=3&uP_sparam=mode&mode=view
> 
> ....or this....
> 
> ...inactiveTabID=100&uP_sparam=mode&mode=view
> ...inactiveTabID=200&uP_sparam=mode&mode=view
> ...inactiveTabID=300&uP_sparam=mode&mode=view
> 
> ...they contain the ID, but never the name.
> 
> I need to create a "manual" url, but because the ID value 
> changes, I need a way to "find out" what the ID value is 
> first. I thought by finding the element that contains 
> name='Email, like this...
> 
> //inactiveTab[@name='Email']
> 
> ...I could then take the value of any ID attribute and then 
> append it to the end of my manual URL(...as a variable?). I 
> would then always
> (hopefully!) know that the manual url would look like the 
> automatically generated URL.
> 
> So, my question is, how do I capture the value of the ID 
> attribute of any element containing name="Home" and make it 
> into something "re-usable"?
> 
> Does this make sense? I hope I am not over complicating things!!!
> 
> Thanks for your help...
> 
> Aaron