XPath: How to select the first given parent of a node?

Question

My XML:

<root>
  <child>
     <childOfChild>
        <anotherLostChild>
           <currentSelectedNode>
              SOME TEXT
           </currentSelectedNode>
        </anotherLostChild>
     </childOfChild>
  </child>
</root>

I selected the node currentSelectedNode using:

xpath.SelectSingleNode("//currentSelectedNode")

But How can I back to select the first chilfOfChild parent node (considering that the context is currentSelectedNode?

xpath.SelectSingleNode("//currentSelectedNode")...???

Answer 1

Your question is really confusingly written but it sounds like you'd want the ancestor axis, something like:

//currentSelectedNode/ancestor::chilfOfChild[1]

(pure xpath solution)

Answer 2

xpath.SelectSingleNode("//currentSelectedNode/../..")

this will select the parent's parent.

T

Answer 3

In Linq-To-XML you would need only to use the Ancestor method:

To get the immediate ancestor:

xElement.Ancestor();

To specify which ancestor:

xElement.Ancestor("NameOfTheAncestorNode");