Hi Bridger, If it’s an option for you to create (possibly intermediate) database for your documents, db:node-id will certainly be the best choice to get unique IDs.
Best, Christian ________________________________ Von: Liam R. E. Quin via BaseX-Talk <[email protected]> Gesendet: Montag, Februar 9, 2026 11:05:01 PM An: Graydon Saunders via BaseX-Talk <[email protected]> Betreff: [basex-talk] Re: persistent id values? On Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:26:14 -0500 Graydon Saunders via BaseX-Talk <[email protected]> wrote: > It's once I want to relate the id back to the document ("this > generated value goes with this id attribute node") that I'm having > trouble. I don't want to use path(); it'd work, but it's not an > efficient approach. (Or at least I don't understand it as efficient.) Yeah, the spec says the value can be used to locate a node, but there doesn’t seem to be a htap() function to go from path to node. So, since XQuery lacks xsl:key :), i build a map of generate-id() values to nodes. But if you need to use it between database queries, yes, attributes. -- Liam Quin: Delightful Computing - Training and Consultancy in XSLT / XML Markup / Typography / CSS / Accessibility / and more... Outreach for the GNU Image Manipulation Program Vintage art digital files - fromoldbooks.org

