Table of contents

Appendices

2.2 Axes

The following axes are available:

• the child axis contains the children of the context node

• the descendant axis contains the descendants of the context node; a descendant is a child or a child of a child and so on; thus the descendant axis never contains attribute or namespace nodes

• the parent axis contains the [parent] of the context node, if there is one

• the ancestor axis contains the ancestors of the context node; the ancestors of the context node consist of the [parent] of context node and the parent's parent and so on; thus, the ancestor axis will always include the root node, unless the context node is the root node

• the following-sibling axis contains all the following siblings of the context node; if the context node is an attribute node or namespace node, the following-sibling axis is empty

• the preceding-sibling axis contains all the preceding siblings of the context node; if the context node is an attribute node or namespace node, the preceding-sibling axis is empty

• the following axis contains all nodes in the same document as the context node that are after the context node in document order, excluding any descendants and excluding attribute nodes and namespace nodes

• the preceding axis contains all nodes in the same document as the context node that are before the context node in document order, excluding any ancestors and excluding attribute nodes and namespace nodes

• the attribute axis contains the attributes of the context node; the axis will be empty unless the context node is an element

• the namespace axis contains the namespace nodes of the context node; the axis will be empty unless the context node is an element

• the self axis contains just the context node itself

• the descendant-or-self axis contains the context node and the descendants of the context node

• the ancestor-or-self axis contains the context node and the ancestors of the context node; thus, the ancestor axis will always include the root node

NOTE: 

The ancestor, descendant, following, preceding and self axes partition a document (ignoring attribute and namespace nodes): they do not overlap and together they contain all the nodes in the document.