XSLT: Search replace attribute values

15th Feb 2007

Yesterday I needed an xsl transformation which could replace a specific attribute value in a xml file and keep the rest intact. The following code is put together by pieces I found around the net (copy-paste FTW :) ):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:param name="attribute"/>
    <xsl:param name="oldvalue"/>
    <xsl:param name="newvalue"/>

    <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

    <!-- This is a generic search replace of attribute values -->
    <xsl:template match="@*" priority="10">
        <xsl:attribute name="{name()}">
            <xsl:choose>
                <xsl:when test="(name()=$attribute) and (. = $oldvalue)"><xsl:value-of select="$newvalue"/></xsl:when>
                <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="."/></xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Lets say that the above code is saved in a file called attribute_replace.xslt. Now with xsltproc you would be able to replace the vaule 5011 with 5015 in all attributes called port:

xsltproc --stringparam attribute port --stringparam oldvalue 5011 --stringparam newvalue 5015 attribute_replace.xslt server_config.xml > new_server_config.xml

I used this to manupulate with some JBoss configuration files.