How to not touch a record if text exist in an XML field but process the record in no text exist using XSLT 2 - xslt

Question

Using XSLT 2 how can I skip and not touch a record if a field contains text, in this case a date? I want to only process all the record that don't have a <SurveyDate> and don't touch record that already have a <SurveyDate>.
I tried using a choose statement with a test of "not(SurveyDate/text())" but this is not working. here is my complete XSL code:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0"
xmlns:lookup="lookup" xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common" exclude-result-prefixes="lookup exsl">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes" encoding="utf-8" media-type="xml/plain" />
<xsl:strip-space elements="*" />
<xsl:template match="node() | #*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node() | #*" />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="Sub">
<!-- This is the final output -->
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not(SurveyDate/text())">
<xsl:if test= "count(Request/Phase/Status) = count(Request/Phase/Status[matches(. , 'Sup|Ser|Adm|Can')])">
<Request>
<xsl:copy-of select="Request/Code"/>
<SurveyDate>
<xsl:value-of select="format-dateTime(current-dateTime(), '[Y0001]-[M01]-[D01]T[H1]:[m01]:[s01]')"/>
</SurveyDate>
</Request>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<!-- just for testing remove when done -->
<Test>Do nothing</Test>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
And this is my test XML data.
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<document>
<businessobjects>
<Sub>
<Code>1.02</Code>
<Status>UsrWorkOrderCancelled</Status>
<Request>
<Code>1.00</Code>
<Description>Test 1</Description>
<SurveyDate>2022-11-02T22:55:55</SurveyDate>
<Phase>
<Code>1.01</Code>
<Status>UsrWorkOrderSupervisorApproved</Status>
</Phase>
<Phase>
<Code>1.02</Code>
<Status>UsrWorkOrderCancelled</Status>
</Phase>
</Request>
</Sub>
<Sub>
<Code>2.01</Code>
<Status>UsrWorkOrderSupervisorApproved</Status>
<Request>
<Code>2.00</Code>
<Description>Test 2</Description>
<SurveyDate></SurveyDate>
<Phase>
<Code>2.01</Code>
<Status>UsrWorkOrderSupervisorApproved</Status>
</Phase>
<Phase>
<Code>2.02</Code>
<Status>UsrWorkOrderCancelled</Status>
</Phase>
</Request>
</Sub>
</businessobjects>
</document>
The result XML I need is this:
<document>
<businessobjects>
<Request>
<Code>2.00</Code>
<SurveyDate>2022-11-03T21:45:13</SurveyDate>
</Request>
</businessobjects>
</document>

Answer 1

My advice: forget using xsl:choose or xsl:if, and instead put the conditional logic into the template's match expression:
<xsl:template match="Sub[not(Request/SurveyDate/text())]">
<!-- handle Sub without SurveyDate -->
<!-- ... -->
</xsl:template>
Leave the case where a Sub does have a SurveyDate for the identity template to handle, if you want to copy it unchanged. If you want to remove it (it's not clear from your test code what you want to do with it), you could add another template to do so:
<xsl:template match="Sub"/>
Note that template would have a lower priority than the one above, because its match expression is simpler, so it would apply only to Sub elements which did have a SurveyDate descendant.