xPath find ancestors through XPathNavigator object and not through expression evaluation

Question

I'm trying to look up the ancestors of a certain node. Let's call it "NodeA". I get a list of "NodeA" nodes and want to look up its ancestors to check a certain attribute value.Here's my code to retrieve all "NodeA" nodes:

String xPathExpression = "//*[local-name()='NodeA']";
XPathNodeIterator nodeSet = (XPathNodeIterator)navigator.Evaluate(xPathExpression);
foreach (XPathNavigator item in nodeSet)
{
      // Iterate through ancestors in here.
}

In the "// Iterate through ancestors in here" area, I can evaluate my node through an expression and get the list of ancestors the following way (for each "NodeA"):

XPathNavigator item;
var ancestorExpression = string.Format("//*[name()='{0}']/ancestor-or-self::*", item.Name);
XPathNodeIterator ancestors = (XPathNodeIterator)navigator.Evaluate(ancestorExpression);

However, this seems redundant, and since I have the original xml, and an XPathNavigator instance, can I not just get my ancestors at that point without having to evaluate an expression through the navigator? Something like the following (where item is of the type XPathNavigator):

item.GetAncestors();

or

Helper.GetAncestors(fullXML, item)

I realize there's a SelectAncestors method on the item, but I haven't had luck getting it to work. But if that is it, an example would be much appreciated

<NodeAGrandDaddy>
   <NodeADaddy>
      <NodeA>
      <NodeA/>
   <NodeADaddy/>
<NodeAGrandDaddy/>

Answer 1

Ok, well, prob you can use Select method with ancestor-or-self::*, i.e.:

item.Select("ancestor-or-self::*")