.parent()
Get the parent of each element in the current set of matched elements, optionally filtered by a selector.
.parent(selector)🡢 jQuery
selector
| Selector | A string containing a selector expression to match elements against. |
Given a jQuery object that represents a set of DOM elements, the parent() method traverses to the immediate parent of each of these elements in the DOM tree and constructs a new jQuery object from the matching elements.
This method is similar to .parents(), except .parent() only travels a single level up the DOM tree. Also, $( "html" ).parent() method returns a set containing document whereas $( "html" ).parents() returns an empty set.
The method optionally accepts a selector expression of the same type that we can pass to the $() function. If the selector is supplied, the elements will be filtered by testing whether they match it.
Consider a page with a basic nested list on it:
<ul class="level-1">
<li class="item-i">I</li>
<li class="item-ii">
II
<ul class="level-2">
<li class="item-a">A</li>
<li class="item-b">
B
<ul class="level-3">
<li class="item-1">1</li>
<li class="item-2">2</li>
<li class="item-3">3</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="item-c">C</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="item-iii">III</li>
</ul>
If we begin at item A, we can find its parents:
$("li.item-a").parent().css("background-color", "red");
The result of this call is a red background for the level-2 list. Since we do not supply a selector expression, the parent element is unequivocally included as part of the object. If we had supplied one, the element would be tested for a match before it was included.
Shows the parent of each element as (parent > child). Check the View Source to see the raw html.
<div>
div,
<span>span, </span>
<b>b </b>
</div>
<p>
p,
<span
>span,
<em>em </em>
</span>
</p>
<div>
div,
<strong
>strong,
<span>span, </span>
<em
>em,
<b>b, </b>
</em>
</strong>
<b>b </b>
</div>
div,
p {
margin: 10px;
}
$("*", document.body).each(function () {
var parentTag = $(this).parent().get(0).tagName;
$(this).prepend(document.createTextNode(parentTag + " > "));
});
Find the parent element of each paragraph with a class "selected".
<div><p>Hello</p></div>
<div class="selected"><p>Hello Again</p></div>
$("p").parent(".selected").css("background", "yellow");