xslt how can I get where I am at in the xml?

So if I have xml that looks like the below and I am in the node "FULLTIME" how can I tell that I am in EMPLOYEE as opposed to contractor? So is there a function I can use that will return something like "ROOT/PERSON/EMPLOYEE" showing me that from the FULLTIME Node the parent nodes are ROOT, PERSON, and EMPLOYEE? I can't seem to find anything that will provide that. I am new to xslt so my ignorance is probably a big part of me not being able to find what I want.

<ROOT>
  <PERSON>
    <EMPLOYEE>
      <FULLTIME>
        <NAME>Mike</NAME>
        <LAST_NAME>Thompson&l开发者_StackOverflowt;/LAST_NAME>
        <EMPLOYEE_ID>1</EMPLOYEE_ID>
      </FULLTIME>
      <PARTTIME />
    </EMPLOYEE>
    <CONTRACTOR>
      <FULLTIME>
        <NAME>Mike</NAME>
        <LAST_NAME>Olsen</LAST_NAME>
        <EMPLOYEE_ID>2</EMPLOYEE_ID>
      </FULLTIME>
      <PARTTIME />
    </CONTRACTOR>
  </PERSON>
</ROOT>

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

--S

You could get EMPLOYEE or CONTRACTOR from FULLTIME node using name() XPath 1.0 function (or local-name() if you're utilizing namespaces):

<xsl:value-of select="name(..)"/> <!-- Returns EMPLOYEE or CONTRACTOR -->

If you want to get full absolute path like /ROOT/PERSON/EMPLOYEE, then use following recipe:

<xsl:for-each select="ancestor::*">
    <xsl:text>/</xsl:text>
    <xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
</xsl:for-each>

The ancestor axis can be used to 'look up' through the tree. It's not entirely clear what you want to do, but you can test if EMPLOYEE is your ancestor:

<xsl:if test="ancestor::EMPLOYEE" >
   ...
</xsl:if>

You can match EMPLOYEE/FULLTIME or CONTRACTOR/FULLTIME separately:

<xsl:template match="EMPLOYEE/FULLTIME">
...
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="CONTRACTOR/FULLTIME">
...
</xsl:template>

Then in each match you can do different things with the fulltime employees vs contractors.

This is, I think, the XSLT way instead of the procedural thinking from other programming languages.