Node: parentNode property

{{APIRef("DOM")}}

The read-only parentNode property of the {{domxref("Node")}} interface returns the parent of the specified node in the DOM tree.

Document and DocumentFragment nodes can never have a parent, so parentNode will always return null. It also returns null if the node has just been created and is not yet attached to the tree. {{domxref("Node.parentElement")}} on the other hand only returns Element nodes.

Value

A {{domxref("Node")}} that is the parent of the current node. The parent of an element is an Element node, a Document node, or a DocumentFragment node.

Example

Using parentNode

This example removes a node from the tree, unless it's not in the tree already.

if (node.parentNode) {
  node.parentNode.removeChild(node);
}

Specifications

{{Specifications}}

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}}

See also

• {{Domxref("Node.firstChild")}}
• {{Domxref("Node.lastChild")}}
• {{Domxref("Node.childNodes")}}
• {{Domxref("Node.nextSibling")}}
• {{Domxref("Node.parentElement")}}
• {{Domxref("Node.previousSibling")}}
• {{Domxref("Node.removeChild")}}