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This article shows how to get the parent of a DOM node
Example
parentNode
The parentNode retrieve all type of node|node
<p><span id="child">Child</span></p>
spanElement = document.getElementById("child");
parentNode = spanElement.parentNode;
console.log("The parent node is a "+(parentNode.nodeType==1 ? "element" : "Unknown"));
parentElement
The parentElement property retrieves the parent node of type element
<p><span id="child">Child</span></p>
spanElement = document.getElementById("child");
parentElement = spanElement.parentElement;
console.log("The parent element is a "+parentElement.tagName);