Getting the parent div of element

Question

You're looking for parentNode, which Element inherits from Node:

parentDiv = pDoc.parentNode;

Handy References:

• DOM2 Core specification - well-supported by all major browsers
• DOM2 HTML specification - bindings between the DOM and HTML
• DOM3 Core specification - some updates, not all supported by all major browsers
• HTML5 specification - which now has the DOM/HTML bindings in it

If you are looking for a particular type of element that is further away than the immediate parent, you can use a function that goes up the DOM until it finds one, or doesn't:

// Find first ancestor of el with tagName
// or undefined if not found
function upTo(el, tagName) {
  tagName = tagName.toLowerCase();

  while (el && el.parentNode) {
    el = el.parentNode;
    if (el.tagName && el.tagName.toLowerCase() == tagName) {
      return el;
    }
  }

  // Many DOM methods return null if they don't 
  // find the element they are searching for
  // It would be OK to omit the following and just
  // return undefined
  return null;
}

Edit 2021

Element.closest is part of the DOM standard. It takes a selector as an argument and returns the first matching ancestor or null if there isn't one.

The property pDoc.parentElement or pDoc.parentNode will get you the parent element.

var parentDiv = pDoc.parentElement

edit: this is sometimes parentNode in some cases.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Node/parentElement