How to get the containing form of an input?

Native DOM elements that are inputs also have a form attribute that points to the form they belong to:

var form = element.form;
alert($(form).attr('name'));

According to w3schools, the .form property of input fields is supported by IE 4.0+, Firefox 1.0+, Opera 9.0+, which is even more browsers that jQuery guarantees, so you should stick to this.

If this were a different type of element (not an <input>), you could find the closest parent with closest:

var $form = $(element).closest('form');
alert($form.attr('name'));

Also, see this MDN link on the form property of HTMLInputElement:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/HTMLInputElement#Properties