How do I rename an attribute using XSLT?

Question

I have an xml like this:

<person name="foo" gender = "male" />

I want to transform it to

<person id="foo" gender="male" />

Is there a way to do that using XSLT?

• I will have a lot of child nodes in person

• I will have more attributes in the person.

Answer 1

This is very simple: Use the identity transform and create a template that transforms the name attribute:

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

<xsl:template match="@name">
   <xsl:attribute name="id">
      <xsl:value-of select="."/>
   </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>

This will leave everything in the document except for name attributes exactly as it is. If you only want to change the name attribute on person elements, put a more restrictive XPath in the template's match attribute, e.g. person/@name.