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.
A string containing a selector expression to match elements against.
Shows the parent of each element as (parent > child). Check the View Source to see the raw html.
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>parent demo</title>
<style>
div, p {
margin: 10px;
}
</style>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<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>
<script>
$( "*", document.body ).each(function() {
var parentTag = $( this ).parent().get( 0 ).tagName;
$( this ).prepend( document.createTextNode( parentTag + " > " ) );
});
</script>
</body>
</html>
Find the parent element of each paragraph with a class "selected".
<!doctype html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>parent demo</title> <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script> </head> <body> <div><p>Hello</p></div> <div class="selected"><p>Hello Again</p></div> <script> $( "p" ).parent( ".selected" ).css( "background", "yellow" ); </script> </body> </html>
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