XSLT, 2nd Edition

Name

current()

Returns a node-set that has the current node as its only member.

Syntax

[1.0] node-set current()
[2.0] item() current()

Inputs

None.

Output

[1.0] A node-set that has the current node as its only member. Most of the time, the current node is no different than the context node.

[2.0] This function, used inside an XPath expression, returns the item that was the context item when the expression was invoked.

In XSLT 1.0 and 2.0, the current node/item is almost always the same as the context node/item. For example, the two XPath expressions below are always the same:

<xsl:value-of select="current()"/>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>

Within a predicate expression, however, the current node and the context node are usually different.

Defined in

[1.0] XSLT section 12.4, “Miscellaneous Additional Functions.”

[2.0] XSLT section 16.6, “Miscellaneous Additional Functions.”

Example

We’ll use the current() function along with a lookup table. We’ll transform a modified version of our chocolate sales figures:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- chocolate-by-month.xml -->
<report year="2006">
  <title>Chocolate bar sales by month</title>
  <sales month="08" total="91316"/>
  <sales month="09" total="82911"/>
  <sales month="10" total="128587"/>
  <sales month="11" total="79244"/>
  <sales month="12" total="113606"/>
</report>

Here’s our stylesheet. It has a lookup table of month names; we’ll use the lookup table to replace the month attribute with the name of the corresponding month. The stylesheet does the ...