xpath Location paths and axes Traversing ancestors
Example
The parent axis contains only the parent of a node. The following expression selects the html element by taking a detour over the body element:
/child::html/child::body/parent::html
.. is a shortcut for parent::node()
The ancestor and ancestor-or-self axes traverse all ancestors of a node. The following expression returns all div elements that are ancestors of the context node:
ancestor::div
