Re: Reassinging attribute values

   <xsl:attribute name="eid">{$newId}</xsl:attribute>

Attribute value template syntax {...} can only be used in Attribute
values, never in element content, and in XSLT Xpath expressions such as
$newId never appear in element content either. Attributes (such as
select) that take XPath expressions never use attribute value template
syntax.

So you just want

<xsl:template match="topic">
 <xsl:attribute name="eid">
  <xsl:value-of select="string manipulation to get it how I want via checking xml:base, etc."/>
 </xsl:attribute>

or, in XSLT2

<xsl:template match="topic">
 <xsl:attribute name="eid"
   select="string manipulation to get it how I want via checking xml:base, etc."/>



Assuming (in both cases of course) thi stemplate is going to be called
at a point that xsl:attribute is allowed 9which means that you have just
generated a new element node, but have not added any child nodes yet.

David

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