Nested for-each loops, accessing outer element with variable from the inner loop

Question

I\'m trying to write an XSL that will output a certain subset of fields from the source XML. This subset will be determined at transformation time, by using an external XML

Answer 1

Your stylesheet looks almost fine. Just the expression $rec/$field doesn't make sense because you can't combine two node sets/sequences this way. Instead, you should compare the names of the elements using the name() function. If I understood your problem correctly, something like this should work:

<xsl:variable name="config" select="document('./configuration.xml')"/>
<xsl:for-each select="data/dataset/record">
    <xsl:variable name="rec" select="."/>
    <xsl:for-each select="$config/configuration/outputField">
        <xsl:variable name="field" select="fieldName"/>
        ...
        <xsl:variable name="value" select="$rec/*[name(.)=$field]"/>
        ...    
    </xsl:for-each>
    <xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>
</xsl:for-each>

Variable field is not required in this example. You can also use function current() to access the current context node of the inner loop:

<xsl:variable name="value" select="$rec/*[name(.)=current()/fieldName]"/>