XML xpath, get the parent element till a specific element

Question

I\'m looking for the right xpath syntax to get a specific parent of an element. Example:

root
   |- div
   |     |
   |     |----??? ---|
   |     |           |-         


        

Answer 1

Given the XML

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <foo id="id1">
        <foo id="i2">
            <baz/>
        </foo>
    </foo>
</root>

You can find the nearest ancestor foo element from baz using the XPath expression:

//baz/ancestor::foo[1]

Which will select the foo element node of id "i2".

So in your example (if I understand right) once you have got the "a" element you want, you can get "back up" the tree to the nearest ancestor div by appending "/ancestor::div[1]" to your expression.

Answer 2

Use:

/root/div[.//a[@class='1']]/text()

This selects any text node that is a child of any a element that has a class attribute with value '1' and that (the a element) is a descendent of any div element that is a child of the top element named root.