DOM - Parent Node

This article shows how to get the parent of a DOM node

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"));

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);