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    |     |    |     |----??? ---|    |     |           |-a [class=1]    |     |                      |- text[ A TEXT I DON'T WANT]    |     |    |     |    |     |    |     |-text[THE TEXT]    |    |-div     |    |-text[THE TEXT I DON'T WANT]    |    |-div     |    |-text[THE TEXT I DON'T WANT] 

I want to get the text "THE TEXT" but the one that contains a [class=1] inside the same div. Something like this:

//div//a[@class=1]/text[contains(.,'A TEXT')]/parent::*/parent::*.... <till div element>  /text 

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.