I need to check whether a parent is a tbody or thead tag.

I have this right now, which does not work:

item.parent("thead")[0] = "<thead>" ? console.log("yes") : console.log("no");

Doesn't work though.

Any hints what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

I need to check whether a parent is a tbody or thead tag.

I have this right now, which does not work:

item.parent("thead")[0] = "<thead>" ? console.log("yes") : console.log("no");

Doesn't work though.

Any hints what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

• javascript
• jquery
• parent

• can you clarify whether you are looking for the direct parent or just checking to see if the item is contained within the thead or tbody? – Evan Davis Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 21:20

5 Answers 5

Think this will work:

console.log(item.parent("thead").is("thead") ? "Yes" : "No");

http://jsfiddle/G9LJT/0/ - No

http://jsfiddle/G9LJT/1/ - Yes

...

item.parent("thead")[0] refers to the first DOM element of your selector.

You can use .is as follows:

var isthead = item.parent().is("thead") ? "yes" : "no";

Note that .is returns true if any of the elements in the set matches, so you need .first to only test on the first element.

You are paring a DOM element to a string. You just need to check if the parent is what you want it to be by trying to select and checking the length:

item.parent('thead').length ? console.log('YES') : console.log('NO');

You can select a anscestor thead tag and check it's length property to see if it exists:

item.parents("thead:first").length > 0 ? console.log("yes") : console.log("no");

Here is a demo: http://jsfiddle/upxyB/

Notice that I used the :first pseudo-selector to only get the first match since parents() is capable of returning a set of results (for instance if you have nested tables).

On a side-note, item.parent("thead")[0] = "<thead>" will always return true, you need double equals signs for a parison operator: item.parent("thead")[0] == "<thead>"

Docs for parison operators - https://developer.mozilla/en/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Comparison_Operators

Try:

var item = $("#something");

if (item.parent().get(0).tagName.toLowerCase() === 'thead') 
    alert('parent is thead'); 
else 
    alert('parent is not thead');

It should work with ie6+, ff, chrome/safari.