• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio®
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
  • About the XPath Processor
  • Using the XPath Query Editor
  • Sample Data for Examples and Practice
  • Getting Started with Queries
  • Specifying the Nodes to Evaluate
    • Understanding XPath Processor Terms
    • Starting at the Context Node
    • About Root Nodes and Document Elements
    • Starting at the Root Node
    • Descending Along Branches
    • Explicitly Specifying the Current Context
    • Specifying Children or Descendants of Parent Nodes
    • Examples of XPath Expression Results
    • Syntax for Specifying an Axis in a Query
    • Supported Axes
    • Axes That Represent the Whole XML Document
  • Handling Strings and Text
  • Specifying Boolean Expressions and Functions
  • Specifying Number Operations and Functions
  • Comparing Values
  • Finding a Particular Node
  • Obtaining a Union
  • Obtaining Information About a Node or a Node Set
  • Using XPath Expressions in Stylesheets
  • Accessing Other Documents During Query Execution
  • XPath Quick Reference
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Accessing Relational Data as XML
• Chapter 13: Integrating with Third-Party File Systems
• Chapter 14: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 15: The Stylus Studio Java API
• Chapter 16: Stylus Studio GUI Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > Specifying Children or Descendants of Parent Nodes

Specifying Children or Descendants of Parent Nodes

Sometimes you want a query to return information about a sibling of the context node. One way to obtain a sibling is to define a query that navigates up to the parent and then down to the sibling.

For example, suppose the context node is the first author element. You want to find out the title associated with this author. The following query returns the associated title element:

../title
               

            

The double dot ( ..) at the beginning of the query instructs the XPath processor to select the parent of the context node. This query returns the title elements that are children of the first book element, which is the parent of the first author element. In the bookstore.xml document, there is only one such title element.

Now suppose that the context node is still the first author element and you want to obtain the style attribute for the book that contains this author. The following query does this:

../@style
               

            

The double dot notation need not appear at the beginning of a query. It can appear anywhere in a query string, just like the dot notation.