How to find first parent element in jquery

Answer 1

just use

$(".element").closest('#container1');

if no ancestor with that id is found then

$(".element").closest('#container1').length will be 0

Answer 2

$(".element").parents();

will give all parents of .element(including html and body)

DEMO

To find any specific parent, suppose container1 then

$('.element').parents('.container1')

DEMO

jQuery .parents() generally find all parents, but if you passed a selector then it will search for that.

Answer 3

To get the first parent personally I use the following construction:

var count_parents = $(".element").parents().length;
$(".element").parents().eq(count_parents - 1);

Hope, it will be helpful for someone.