CSSPseudoElement: parent property
Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.
The parent read-only property of the CSSPseudoElement interface returns a reference to the immediate originating element of the pseudo-element, which can be an Element, or a CSSPseudoElement in the case of a nested pseudo-element.
This differs from the CSSPseudoElement.element property, which always returns an Element: A reference to the ultimate originating element of the pseudo-element.
Value
An Element or a CSSPseudoElement representing the pseudo-element's immediate parent.
Examples
>Basic usage
In this example, we demonstrate the difference between the parent and element properties.
HTML
We include a <p> element containing text, and an <output> element to log output from JavaScript.
<p>New York's hottest club is...</p>
<output></output>
CSS
We give the <p> element's ::after pseudo-element some content and set its display to list-item so it will generate a ::marker. We also apply some basic styles.
p {
background-color: violet;
padding: 20px;
}
p::after {
content: "Crease";
background-color: cadetblue;
padding: 20px;
display: list-item;
}
p::after::marker {
content: "🔹";
}
JavaScript
In our script, we grab references to our <p> and <output> elements, and retrieve CSSPseudoElement objects via the pseudo() method representing the <p> element's ::after pseudo-element, and the ::after pseudo-element's ::marker pseudo-element. We then log some details of the child pseudo-element to our <output> element. We also include some rudimentary error handling via a try...catch structure, to print an error message in non-supporting browsers.
const pElem = document.querySelector("p");
const output = document.querySelector("output");
try {
const pseudoElem = pElem.pseudo("::after");
const pseudoPseudoElem = pseudoElem.pseudo("::marker");
output.textContent = `${pseudoPseudoElem.type} pseudo-element. Parent: ${pseudoPseudoElem.parent.type}. Ultimate originating element: <${pseudoPseudoElem.element.tagName.toLowerCase()}>`;
} catch (e) {
output.textContent = `Your browser doesn't support CSSPseudoElement and/or the pseudo() method: ${e}`;
}
Result
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| CSS Pseudo-Elements Module Level 4> # dom-csspseudoelement-parent> |