RE: Abstracting XSLT to generate multiple forms for th

I suspect you mis-typed the expected output. Based on the example XML, I surmise that the output you wanted is:

username: eattabasco

and when you change to full_name, the output you expect is:

full_name: Johnathon Wright

as you stated.

This really isn't very complicated. I took your XML and added an enclosing element to make it well-formed (note; I have studiously excluded the term "root" in describing this element because it seems that term is defined differently in XML and XPath and I don't want to wander into that swamp again).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<doc>
	<field_definition>
	  <name>username</name>
	  <type>text</type>
	</field_definition>
	<data>
	  <username>eattabasco</username>
	  <full_name>Johnathon Wright</full_name>
	</data>
</doc>

This stylesheet will produce desired output #1:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="text" indent="yes" />
  <xsl:strip-space elements="*" />

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:variable name="target" select="/doc/field_definition/name" />

  <xsl:template match="doc">
    <xsl:apply-templates />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="data">
    <xsl:value-of select="$target" />:<xsl:value-of select="child::node()[local-name()= $target]" />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="field_definition" />

</xsl:stylesheet>

If you change your input XML so:

<name>full_name</name>

you will get the alternate output:

full_name: Johnathon Wright


-- 
Charles Knell
cknell@xxxxxxxxxx - email