Node: parentElement property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

The read-onlyparentElement property ofNode interfacereturns the DOM node's parentElement, ornull if the node either has noparent, or its parent isn't a DOMElement.Node.parentNode on the other hand returns any kind of parent, regardless of its type.

Value

AnElement that is the parent element of the current node,ornull if there isn't one.

Example

Using parentElement

This example sets the parent ofnode to have a red text color.

if (node.parentElement) {  node.parentElement.style.color = "red";}

parentElement being null

parentElement can benull if the node has no parent (for example, because it isn't attached to a tree) or its parent is not anElement. On the other hand,Node.parentNode always returns the parent node, which may be aDocument or other node types.

html

<!doctype html><html lang="en-US">  <body>    <script>      const html = document.querySelector("html");      console.log(html.parentElement); // null      console.log(html.parentNode); // document    </script>  </body></html>