One of the really ugly things about working with Xsl is that it doesn’t support actual variables. There is a ‘variable’ element but it isn’t actually a variable; it is a constant as the value cannot be changed once it has been set. This leads to all sorts of horrible solutions, like duplicating Xsl for the various possible values/conditions or even turning a block of Xsl into a template and then passing parameters to it every time that value is needed. The latter works and is supported but is frequently overkill.

However, there is another way Click to read the full post