:parent Selector

jQuery

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:parent Selector

Categories: Selectors > Content Filter | Selectors > jQuery Extensions

parent selector

Description: Select all elements that that have at least one child node (either an element or text).

  • version added: 1.0jQuery( ":parent" )

This is the inverse of :empty.

One important thing to note regarding the use of :parent (and :empty) is that child nodes include text nodes.

The W3C recommends that the <p> element have at least one child node, even if that child is merely text (see http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-P). Some other elements, on the other hand, are empty (i.e. have no children) by definition: <input>, <img>, <br>, and <hr>, for example.

Additional Notes:

  • Because :parent is a jQuery extension and not part of the CSS specification, queries using :parent cannot take advantage of the performance boost provided by the native DOM querySelectorAll() method. To achieve the best performance when using :parent to select elements, first select the elements using a pure CSS selector, then use .filter(":parent").

Example:

Finds all tds with children, including text.

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                                        <!DOCTYPE html>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        <html>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        <head>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        <style>
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        td { width:40px; background:green; }
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        </style>
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        </head>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        <body>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        <table border="1">
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        <tr><td>Value 1</td><td></td></tr>
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                        <tr><td>Value 2</td><td></td></tr>
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        </table>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        <script>
                                        $("td:parent").fadeTo(1500, 0.3);
                                        </script>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                       
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        </body>
                                      
                                    

                                  

                                  

                                    

                                      
                                        </html>
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