XPath relative path in expression - xslt

Question

I am in 'group' node. From it, I want to find such 'item' node, that has 'id' attribute equals to current's 'group' node 'ref_item_id' attribute value. So in my case, by being in 'group' node B, I want 'item' node A as output. This works:
<xsl:value-of select="preceding-sibling::item[#id='1']/#description"/>
But this doesn't (gives nothing):
<xsl:value-of select="preceding-sibling::item[#id=#ref_item_id]/#description"/>
When I type:
<xsl:value-of select="#ref_item_id"/>
I have '1' as result. So this attribute is for sure accessible, but I can't find path to it from XPath expression above. I tried many '../' combinations, but couldn't get it work.
Code to test: http://www.xmlplayground.com/7l42fo
Full XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<item description="A" id="1"/>
<item description="C" id="2"/>
<group description="B" ref_item_id="1"/>
</root>
Full XSLT:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text" indent="no"/>
<xsl:template match="root">
<xsl:for-each select="group">
<xsl:value-of select="preceding-sibling::item[#id=#ref_item_id]/#description"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 1

This has to do with context. As soon as you enter a predicate, the context becomes the node currently being filtered by the predicate, and no longer the node matched by the template.
You have two options - use a variable to cache the outer scope data and reference that variable in your predicate
<xsl:variable name='ref_item_id' select='#ref_item_id' />
<xsl:value-of select="preceding-sibling::item[#id=$ref_item_id]/#description"/>
or make use of the current() function
<xsl:value-of select="preceding-sibling::item[#id=current()/#ref_item_id]/#description"/>

Answer 2

Your expression searches for an item whose id attribute matches its own ref_item_id. You need to capture the current ref_item_id in an xsl:variable and refer to that xsl:variable in the expression.

Answer 3

One more possible solution using xsl:key
<xsl:key name="kItemId" match="item" use="#id" />
<xsl:template match="root">
<xsl:for-each select="group">
<xsl:value-of select="key('kItemId', #ref_item_id)[1]/#description"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

Answer 4

Looking at the XML, if I assume that you have <item> and <group> as siblings and in any order.
Then a sample input XML would look like the following.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<item description="A" id="1"/>
<item description="C" id="2"/>
<group description="B" ref_item_id="1"/>
<item description="D" id="1"/>
<group description="E" ref_item_id="2"/>
</root>
Now, if the goal is to extract the description of all the <item> nodes whose id is matching with corresponding <group> *nodes ref_item_id*. Then we can simply loop over only such <item> nodes and get their description.
<xsl:output method="text" indent="no"/>
<xsl:template match="root">
<xsl:for-each select="//item[(./#id=following-sibling::group/#ref_item_id) or (./#id=preceding-sibling::group/#ref_item_id)]">
<xsl:value-of select="./#description"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Since you say that nodes are having unique id and all nodes are placed before nodes.
I would recommend you to use the following XSL and loop over specific nodes instead of nodes.
<xsl:output method="text" indent="no"/>
<xsl:template match="root">
<xsl:for-each select="//item[./#id=following-sibling::group/#ref_item_id]">
<xsl:value-of select="./#description"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>