Example
Return all ancestor elements of <span>:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("span").parents().css({"color":
"red", "border": "2px solid red"});
});
Result:
body (great-great-grandparent)
div (great-grandparent)
ul (grandparent)
- li (direct parent)
span
Try it Yourself »
Definition and Usage
The parents() method returns all ancestor elements of the selected element.
An ancestor is a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, and so on.
The DOM tree: This method traverse upwards from the parent element along ancestors of DOM elements, all the way up to the document's root element (<html>).
Note: If the filter parameter is empty, this function will select all ancestors of a set of elements, from the direct parent and all the way up to <body> and <html>. It is therefore often useful to pass a selector expression to narrow down the search result.
This method is similar to closest(), in that they both traverse up the DOM tree. The differences are as follows:
parents()
- Begins with the parent element
- Travels up the DOM tree and returns all ancestors that matches the passed expression
- The returned jQuery object contains zero or more than one element
closest()
- Begins with the current element
- Travels up the DOM tree and returns the first ancestor that matches the passed expression
- The returned jQuery object contains zero or one element
Other related methods:
- parent() - returns the direct parent element of the selected element
- parentsUntil() - returns all ancestor elements between two given arguments
Syntax
$(selector).parents(filter)
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| class="notranslate"filter | Optional. Specifies a selector expression to narrow down the search for
ancestors Note: To return multiple ancestors, separate each expression with a comma. |
Try it Yourself - Examples
Narrow down the search
How to use the filter parameter to
return all ancestors of <span> that are <ul> elements.
Return multiple ancestors
How to use the filter parameter to
return all ancestors of <span> that are <li> and <div> elements.
Show
the ancestors of an element by tag names
A demonstration which shows who the ancestors of a <span> element
actually are.