Remove duplicate elements based on attributes and values

Question

There are many questions about how to remove duplicate elements when you can group those elements by a certain attribute or value, however, in my case the attributes are being dynamically generated in the XSLT already and I don't want to have to program in every attribute for every element to use as a grouping key.

How do you remove duplicate elements without knowing in advance their attributes? So far, I've tried using generate-id() on each element and grouping by that, but the problem is generate-id isn't generating the same ID for elements with the same attributes:

<xsl:template match="root">
    <xsl:variable name="tempIds">
        <xsl:for-each select="./*>
            <xsl:copy>
                <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
                <xsl:attribute name="tempID">
                    <xsl:value-of select="generate-id(.)"/>
                </xsl:attribute>
                <xsl:copy-of select="node()"/>
            </xsl:copy>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:variable>
    <xsl:for-each-group select="$tempIds" group-by="@tempID">
        <xsl:sequence select="."/>
    </xsl:for-each-group>
</xsl:template>

Test data:

<root>
    <child1>
        <etc/>
    </child1>
    <dynamicElement1 a="2" b="3"/>
    <dynamicElement2 c="3" d="4"/>
    <dynamicElement2 c="3" d="5"/>
    <dynamicElement1 a="2" b="3"/>
</root>

With the end result being only one of the two dynamicElement1 elements remaining:

<root>
    <child1>
        <etc/>
    </child1>
    <dynamicElement1 a="2" b="3"/>
    <dynamicElement2 c="3" d="4"/>
    <dynamicElement2 c="3" d="5"/>
</root>

Answer 1

In XSLT 3 as shown in https://xsltfiddle.liberty-development.net/pPqsHTi you can use a composite key of all attributes with e.g.

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    version="3.0">

  <xsl:mode on-no-match="shallow-copy"/>

  <xsl:output indent="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="root">
      <xsl:copy>
          <xsl:for-each-group select="*" composite="yes" group-by="@*">
              <xsl:sequence select="."/>
          </xsl:for-each-group>
      </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Note that technically attributes are not ordered so it might be safer to group by a sort of the attributes by node-name() or similar, as done with XSLT 3 without higher-order functions in https://xsltfiddle.liberty-development.net/pPqsHTi/2

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:mf="http://example.com/mf"
    version="3.0">

  <xsl:mode on-no-match="shallow-copy"/>

  <xsl:output indent="yes"/>

  <xsl:function name="mf:node-sort" as="node()*">
      <xsl:param name="input-nodes" as="node()*"/>
      <xsl:perform-sort select="$input-nodes">
          <xsl:sort select="namespace-uri()"/>
          <xsl:sort select="local-name()"/>
      </xsl:perform-sort>
  </xsl:function>

  <xsl:template match="root">
      <xsl:copy>
          <xsl:for-each-group select="*" composite="yes" group-by="mf:node-sort(@*)">
              <xsl:sequence select="."/>
          </xsl:for-each-group>
      </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

or as you could do with Saxon EE simply with

<xsl:template match="root">
    <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:for-each-group select="*" composite="yes" group-by="sort(@*, (), function($att) { namespace-uri($att), local-name($att) })">
            <xsl:sequence select="."/>
        </xsl:for-each-group>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>