How to find a parent with a known class in jQuery

Question

I have a <div> that has many other <div>s within it, each at a different nesting level. Rather than give every child <div> an identifier, I rather just give the root <div> the identifier. Here’s an example:

<div class="a" id="a5">
  <div class="b">
    <div class="c">
      <a class="d">
      </a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

If I write a function in jQuery to respond to class d and I want to find the ID for its parent, class a, how would I do this?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

Assuming that this is .d, you can write

$(this).closest('.a');

The closest method returns the innermost parent of your element that matches the selector.

Hope it helps!!

Thank you!!