Select nearest ancestor called "BATCH" in XPATH

Question

I'm trying to select the first ancestor called "BATCH" going up in the XML Tree.

I've tried: ancestor::BATCH and ancestor::BATCH[1] but it's not working.

[XPATH 2.0]

Answer 1

What do you mean by first ancestor?

If you have an XML:

<!-- second ancestor -->
<BATCH>
    <a>
       <!-- first ancestor -->
       <BATCH>
           <b></b>
       </BATCH>
    </a>
</BATCH>

Assuming your context node is <b> you would use ancestor::BATCH[1] to select what I described as first ancestor

If however by first ancestor you mean the outermost ancestor, which I defined here as second ancestor you'd have to use ancestor::BATCH[not(ancestor::BATCH)] to select the ancestor BATCH that doesn't have an ancestor BATCH.

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If you have a namespace problem like @keshlam mentioned in his comment you can use

ancestor::*[local-name()='BATCH'][1]

To select it ignoring its namespace.