Closest ancestor matching selector using native DOM?

Question 1

See the element.closest() documentation.

Implementing such function with Element.matches() seems not optimal in terms of performance, cause apparently matches() will make a call to querySelectorAll() every time you test a parent, while only one call is sufficient for the job.

Here's a polyfill for closest() on MDN. Note a single call to querySelectorAll()

if (window.Element && !Element.prototype.closest) {
  Element.prototype.closest = 
  function(s) {
      var matches = (this.document || this.ownerDocument).querySelectorAll(s),
          i,
          el = this;
      do {
          i = matches.length;
          while (--i >= 0 && matches.item(i) !== el) {};
      } while ((i < 0) && (el = el.parentElement)); 
      return el;
  };
}

But bear in mind that function implemented like this will not work properly on unattached tree (detached from document.documentElement root)

//Element.prototype.closestTest = function(s){...as seen above...};

var detachedRoot = document.createElement("footer");
var child = detachedRoot.appendChild(document.createElement("div"));
detachedRoot.parentElement; //null

child.closestTest("footer"); //null

document.documentElement.append(detachedRoot);
child.closestTest("footer"); //<footer>

Though closest() that is implemented in Firefox 51.0.1 seems to work fine with detached tree

document.documentElement.removeChild(detachedRoot);
child.closestTest("footer"); //null
child.closest("footer"); //<footer>

Question 2

Building off of Alnitak's answer. Here's the working current implementation with matchesSelector which is now matches in the DOM spec.

// get nearest parent element matching selector
function closest(el, selector) {
    var matchesSelector = el.matches || el.webkitMatchesSelector || el.mozMatchesSelector || el.msMatchesSelector;

    while (el) {
        if (matchesSelector.call(el, selector)) {
            break;
        }
        el = el.parentElement;
    }
    return el;
}

Browser support is great: http://caniuse.com/matchesselector

Question 3

Seems like Chrome 40 will bring a native element.closest() method (http://blog.chromium.org/2014/12/chrome-40-beta-powerful-offline-and.html) specified here: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#dom-element-closest

Question 4

This sounds like it ought to be pretty easy, given the matches function, although that's not widely supported yet:

function closest(elem, selector) {
    while (elem) {
        if (elem.matches(selector)) {
            return elem;
        } else {
            elem = elem.parentElement;
        }
    }
    return null;
}

The trouble is, the matches function isn't properly supported. As it's still a relatively new API it's available as webkitMatchesSelector in Chrome and Safari, and mozMatchesSelector in Firefox.

Question 5

Using element.closest() we can find Closest ancestor matching selector. This method takes selectors list as parameter and returns the closest ancestor. As per Rob's Comment this API will be available from chrome 41 and FF 35.

As explained in whatwg specs https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#dom-element-closest

Example: The below HTML will show alert message "true"

<html>
    <body>
        <foo>
            <bar>
                <a id="a">
                    <b id="b">
                        <c id="c"></c>
                    </b>
                </a>
            </bar>
         </foo>
    <script>
        var a = document.getElementById('a');
        var b = document.getElementById('b');
        var c = document.getElementById('c');
        alert(c.closest("a, b")==b);
    </script>
    </body>
</html>

Question 6

A little recursion will do the trick.

// get nearest parent element matching selector
var closest = (function() {
    var matchesSelector = el.matches || el.webkitMatchesSelector || el.mozMatchesSelector || el.msMatchesSelector;

    return function closest(el, selector) {
        return !el ? null :
        matchesSelector.call(el, selector) ? el : closest(el.parentElement, selector);
    };
})();