How to get parent of WebElement

Question

I've tried

private WebElement getParent(final WebElement webElement) {
    return webElement.findElement(By.xpath(".."));
}

But I'm getting:

org.openqa.selenium.InvalidSelectorException: The given selector .. is either invalid or does not result in a WebElement. The following error occurred: InvalidSelectorError: The result of the xpath expression ".." is: [object XrayWrapper [object HTMLDocument]]. It should be an element. Command duration or timeout: 10 milliseconds For documentation on this error,

Is there a way to get the parent of current element? Thanks

Works fine for me. Something else must be going on. Post more code. — SiKing, Jun 17 '14 at 15:55
Your approach seems to be fine. Post an HTML code sample, where you get your error please — Furious Duck, Jun 17 '14 at 16:13

score 28 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 17 '14 at 18:42

28

There are a couple of ways you can accomplish this. If you insist on using XPath to do it, you need to add the context node to the locator, like this:

WebElement parentElement = childElement.findElement(By.xpath("./.."));

Alternatively, you can use the JavascriptExecutor interface, which might be slightly more performant. That would look like this:

// NOTE: broken into separate statements for clarity. Could be done as one statement.
JavascriptExecutor executor = (JavascriptExecutor)driver;
WebElement parentElement = (WebElement)executor.executeScript("return arguments[0].parentNode;", childElement);

answered Jun 17 '14 at 18:42

JimEvans

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thanks ,workking perfect for me! – eugene.polschikov Sep 17 '18 at 16:51
Simple but genius to use the child element's parent code to go up two levels to get the parent. NICE. – Neal Barsch May 08 '19 at 23:43

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 14 '23 at 01:47

3

Alternatively, can you try using Javascript Executor?

WebElement childElement = driver.findElement(By.id("someIdHere"));

WebElement parent = (WebElement) ((JavascriptExecutor) driver)
.executeScript("return arguments[0].parentNode;", childElement);

edited Jul 14 '23 at 01:47

Ravindra Gullapalli

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answered Jun 17 '14 at 16:29

twisted_coder

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How to get parent of WebElement

2 Answers2

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