XSLT - hyperlink an XML element based on its attribute

Question

I have the following XML that stores movies and actors:

<movies
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="movies.xsd">

<movie movieID="1">
    <cast>
        <actors>
            <actor actorID="1">
                <name>Bob</name>
            </actor>
            <actor actorID="2">
                <name>John</name>
            </actor>
            <actor>
                <name>Mike</name>
            </actor>
        </actors>
    </cast>
</movie>

</movies>

The first two actors have an attribute "actorID" with a unique value. The third actor has no attributes. I would like to display the first two actors' names as hyperlinks and display the third actor name as plain text.

This is my XSLT:

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

<xsl:template match="movie">    
    <xsl:text>Actors: </xsl:text>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="cast/actors/actor[@actorID]/name"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="actor[@actorID]/name">
    <xsl:element name="a">
        <xsl:attribute name="href">www.mywebsite.com</xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:value-of select="." />
    </xsl:element>
    <xsl:element name="br" />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="actor/name">
    <xsl:value-of select="." />
    <xsl:element name="br" />
</xsl:template>

The output that I get is Bob and John displayed as plain text, and Mike not displayed at all. So it does pretty much the opposite of what I want to achieve.

Answer 1

Your XPath here:

<xsl:apply-templates select="cast/actors/actor[@actorID]/name"/>

is causing templates to only be applied to actors that have an actorID attribute. Instead, it sounds like this is what you should be using:

<xsl:apply-templates select="cast/actors/actor/name"/>

Then the XSLT should behave like you expect.

As a side note , I would advise using literal elements in your XSLT, unless there's a need to use xsl:element :

<xsl:template match="actor[@actorID]/name">
    <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com">
        <xsl:value-of select="." />
    </a>
    <br />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="actor/name">
    <xsl:value-of select="." />
    <br />
</xsl:template>

It makes the XSLT easier to read IMHO. If you need to include values in an attribute, you can use attribute value templates:

<a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/actors?id={../@actorID}">