Node.parentNode

JavaScript’s Node.parentNode read-only property returns the Node’s parent node or null if the Node does not have a parent node.

Value

A Node object or null if the node does not have a parent node.

Examples

Here is an example of using the parentNode property.

Suppose we have the following HTML elements:

<div>
 <p>You can do wonderful things with JavaScript.</p>
</div>

How can we make sure with JavaScript that the p element has a parent node named “DIV”?

Well, we can select the element with the querySelector() method and use the parentNode and nodeName properties:

let p = document.querySelector('p');
console.log(p.parentNode.nodeName);

The last line logs the name of the parent node to the console of your browser.

Additional notes

You may have wondered why the name of the p element is in uppercase. That is because the names of HTML elements are in uppercase, whereas the names of XML elements are in lowercase.

Browser compatibility