.parent()
Categories: Tree Traversal
.parent( [ selector ] )Returns: jQuery
Description: Get the parent of each element in the current set of matched elements, optionally filtered by a selector.
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.parent( [ selector ] )
version added: 1.0selector A string containing a selector expression to match elements against.
Given a jQuery object that represents a set of DOM elements, the .parent()
method allows us to search through the parents of these elements in the DOM tree and construct a new jQuery object from the matching elements. The .parents()
and .parent()
methods are similar, except that the latter only travels a single level up the DOM tree.
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.
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Shows the parent of each element as (parent > child). Check the View Source to see the raw html.
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>
CSS:
div,p { margin:10px; }
Code:
$("*", document.body).each(function () { var parentTag = $(this).parent().get(0).tagName; $(this).prepend(document.createTextNode(parentTag + " > ")); });
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Find the parent element of each paragraph with a class "selected".
HTML:
<div><p>Hello</p></div> <div class="selected"><p>Hello Again</p></div>
Code:
$("p").parent(".selected").css("background", "yellow");