Consolidating xpath expressions...

Hi guys!

Can someone give me some advice as to how I can change these three lines of code into a single line??

<xsl:for-each select="//client[not($clientid) or @ID=$clientid]">
<xsl:for-each select="descendant-or-self::client">
<xsl:for-each select="usage[@TOTALSENT > 0]">
..... do something here....
<xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each>


It would be really great if I could just do.....
<xsl:for-each select="super select that does all that!">
..... do something here....
</xsl:for-each>



The transformation is on an xml document that's a little bit like this...


<client ID=1>
<client ID=2>
<client ID=3>
<usage @TOTALSENT=5/>
</client>
<client>
<usage @TOTALSENT=9/>
<client ID=4>
</client>
</client>


Any help would be great!
Thanks!

but to write that on a single line should be

<xsl:for-each select="//client[not($clientid) or @ID=$clientid]/descendant-or-self::client/usage[@TOTALSENT > 0]">


But there are a number of ways you might be able to optimize that statement.

1) //client[not($clientid) or @ID=$clientid]/descendant::usage[@TOTALSENT > 0]"

if you want all usage elements with a totalset greater than 0 that have ancestor elements that have ids equal to the client id

2) descendant::client[@ID=$client]/descendant::usage[@TOTALSENT > 0]

If you just want all usage elements that are descendants of the current context
3) descendant::usage

Of course you get the same results with all of these statements with the xml you provided. However if the xml document varies at all ( and I suspect it does quite a bit) then thses statements might be a little to broad for you purposes.

Axes are powerful and tend to pull a lot of nodes. Controlling the selection is often difficult.

You could probably accomplish what you are trying to do much more easily through keys.