Number of ancestors of a precise node

Question

As usual my question is simple but I dont seem to be able to do what I want :

<test targetAttribute="level 1">
   <test targetAttribute="level 2">
      <test targetAttribute="level 3">
         <test targetAttribute="level 4">
            <test targetAttribute="level 5">
            </test>
         </test>
      </test>
   </test>
</test>

I want to know how many ancestors have the //test/@targetAttribute="level 5" node.

I have been trying thousand things, nothing is working for me :

• count(//test/@targetAttribute="level 5"/ancestor::*)
• //test/@targetAttribute="level 5"/count(ancestor::*)
• count(ancestor::*[//test/@targetAttribute="level 5"])
• ...

I just don't seem to be able to find what I am looking at on google...

Answer 1

The notion of ancestor is known for element, so, first, you need to find the target element which has @targetAttribute="level 5" :

//test[@targetAttribute='level 5']

From here, you should be able to modify the above XPath to return count of ancestor elements of the target element :

count(//test[@targetAttribute='level 5']/ancestor::*)

Demo