XML Tutorial/XPath/parent

returns the name of the parent element

File: Data.xml
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<product>
   <books>
      <book>
         Getting Started with Microsoft Visual C++ 
      </book>
      <book>C How to Program</book>
   </books>
</product>
File: Transform.xslt
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="/product">
    <xsl:value-of
      select="name(//parent::node()[. = "C How to Program"])" />
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>book

Selecting a Node"s Parent or Siblings

The .. is often combined with the attribute axis to find the attribute of the parent node (../@name).
You can use an asterisk as a wildcard within the path.
For example, /*/A would select all the A elements of all of the siblings of the current node.

File: Data.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<employee>
  <name language="English">T1</name>
  <name language="Latin">T2</name>
  <projects>
    <project>project1</project>
    <project>destruction</project>
    <project>medicine</project>
  </projects>
  <weight>3 points</weight>
</employee>

File: Transform.xslt
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  version="1.0">
  <xsl:template match="projects">
    <ul>
      <xsl:value-of select="../name[@language="English"]" />
      <xsl:for-each select="project">
        <li>
          <xsl:value-of select="." />
        </li>
      </xsl:for-each>
    </ul>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  T1
  T2
  <ul>T1<li>project1</li><li>destruction</li><li>
      medicine 
    </li></ul>
  3 points

The parent axis is used to select the parent node of the context node.

File: Data.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<data>
    <AAA id="a1" pos="start">
      <BBB id="b1"/>
      <BBB id="b2"/>
    </AAA>
    <AAA id="a2">
      <BBB id="b3"/>
      <BBB id="b4"/>
      <CCC id="c1">
        <CCC id="c2"/>
      </CCC>
      <BBB id="b5">
        <CCC id="c3"/>
      </BBB>
    </AAA>
</data>
File: Transform.xslt
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
      version="1.0"
      xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="/">
      <table border="1" cellpadding="6">
        <tr>
          <th colspan="2">Axis: parent</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td>Element</th>
          <td>Node-set</th>
        </tr>
        <xsl:for-each select="/source//*">
          <xsl:call-template name="print"/>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </table>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template name="print">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
          <xsl:text> id = </xsl:text>
          <xsl:value-of select="./@id"/>
        </td>
        <td>
          <xsl:for-each select="parent::*">
            <xsl:if test="not(@id)">
              <xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
            </xsl:if>
            <xsl:value-of select="./@id"/>
            <xsl:text/>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><table border="1" cellpadding="6"><tr><th colspan="2">Axis: parent</th></tr><tr><td>Element</th><td>Node-set</th></tr></table>