Add class to a parent Element using JavaScript

# Add class to a parent Element using JavaScript

To add a class to a parent element:

Select the child element.
Use the parentElement property to get access to the parent node.
Call the classList.add() method on the parent, passing it the class name as a parameter.

Here is the HTML for the examples.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>bobbyhadz.com</title>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />

    <style>
      .yellow-bg {
        background-color: yellow;
      }
    </style>
  </head>

  <body>
    <div data-id="parent-1">
      <div id="child">Child 1</div>
    </div>

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

The code for this article is available on GitHub

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

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const child = document.getElementById('child');

child.parentElement.classList.add('yellow-bg');

The code for this article is available on GitHub

add class to parent element

We used the parentElement property on the node to get access to its parent.

The next step is to use the classList.add() method to add a class to the parent.

You can pass as many classes to the add() method as necessary.

index.js

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const child = document.getElementById('child');

child.parentElement.classList.add(
  'yellow-bg',
  'second-class',
  'third-class'
);

If a class is already present on the node, the add() method will omit the specific class.

Similarly, if you need to remove one or more classes from the parent, use the remove() method.

index.js

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child.parentElement.classList.add(
  'yellow-bg',
  'second-class',
  'third-class'
);

child.parentElement.classList.remove(
  'yellow-bg',
  'second-class'
);

# Add a class to a parent element using closest

If you need to add a class to an element that isn't a direct parent of the node, use the closest() method to select the element.

The closest() method traverses the Element and its parents until it finds a node that matches the provided selector.

Let's say that we need to select the div with id of parent-1 in this example.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>bobbyhadz.com</title>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />

    <style>
      .yellow-bg {
        background-color: yellow;
      }
    </style>
  </head>

  <body>
    <div id="parent-1" data-id="parent-1">
      <span id="parent-2">
        <div id="child">Child 1</div>
      </span>
    </div>

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

The code for this article is available on GitHub

Here is how we would add a class to the div element using JavaScript.

index.js

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const child = document.getElementById('child');

child.closest('#parent-1').classList.add('yellow-bg');

add class to parent element using closest

The code for this article is available on GitHub

We used the closest method instead of the parentElement property as we're trying to add a class to an element that isn't a direct parent.

If the element itself matches the selector, the element is returned.

If no element that matches the provided selector exists, the closest() method returns null.

The method takes a string that contains a selector. The provided selector can be as specific as necessary.

index.js

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const child = document.getElementById('child');

child.closest('body > div#parent-1').classList.add('yellow-bg');

We used the closest() method to select a div element with an id of parent-1, which has the body element as its parent.

If an invalid selector string is provided to the closest() method, a SyntaxError is thrown.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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Add class to a parent Element using JavaScript