> I want to print all book titles in library with criteria status = "active".

 <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:reporting="http://www.sophis.net/reporting">

<xsl:template match="demo">
  <xsl:apply-templates
  select="library[criteria/status/@value='active']/books/book"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="book">
: <xsl:value-of select="@title"/>
</xsl:template>

 </xsl:stylesheet>

> What did I wrong?


preceding::/

that would be asking for the preceding / node, which isn't what you
meant' you meant


/books[preceding::status

but ther eis no need to keep goiing back looking everywhere in all
earlier nodes, also you would need a [1] otherwise if any earlier status
was active you would list the book, but you want to just check the
immediately preceding element.


 select="./@title"

./ at the front of a select never does anything (it doesn't do any harm)



similarly

<xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

is the default template so doesn't actually make any difference here.


David


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