Using Protractor to select elements with by.repeater() - protractor

Question

Using the following Protractor element and by.repeater() API methods below:
var targetRowText = 'Sales';
var targetGridName = 'myGrid';
var sel = 'grid-directive[grid-name="' + targetGridName + '"] .col-freeze .grid-wrapper';
var gridRows = element(by.css(sel).all(by.repeater('row in vm.sourceData.data'));
var result = gridRows.all(by.cssContainingText('span', targetRowText)).first();
I am able to select the following row element from a grid which I have labeled, myGrid:
<div id="rowId_21" ng-class-odd="'row-2'" ng-class-even="'row-3'" ng-class="vm.hideRow(row)" class="row-3 height-auto">
<div ng-repeat="column in vm.sourceData.columns" >
<div ng-if="!column.subCols" class="ng-scope">
<div ng-if="row[column.field].length !== 0" class="ng-scope highlight21">
<span ng-bind-html="row[column.field] | changeNegToPrenFormat" vm.highlightedrow="" class="ng-binding">
Sales
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Please note that I have used by.cssContainingText() to look up the "Sales" span element.
MY PROBLEM:
That that I have located this row in var result, how can I retrieve the id attribute of that outer-most div ?
In other words, I need to selected <div id="rowId_21" so that I can reuse id="rowId_21" in a subsequent Protractor selector.
In jQuery, for example, I could use brute force to get that outer div id as follows :
var el = $('grid-directive[grid-name="Sales"] .col-freeze .grid-wrapper #rowId_21 span')
el.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement;
Here's a high-level outlines of what I mean. The grid actually separates the left-most column from the actual data rows, so there are two distinct divs that accomplish this:
<div grid-directive grid-name="myGrid">
<div class="col-freeze" >
<!-- CONTAINS LEFT-MOST "CATEGORIES" COLUMN -->
</div>
<div class="min-width-grid-wrapper">
<!-- CONTAINS THE DATA ROWS-->
</div>
However, I'm struggling to do this in Protractor.
Advice is appreciated...
Bob

Answer 1

A straight-forward option would be to get to the desired parent element using the ancestor axis:
element(by.xpath("./ancestor::div[starts-with(#id, 'rowId')]")).getAttribute("id").then(function (parentId) {
// use parentId here
});
Though, I think that this going down and then up the tree should be considered as a sign that you are not approaching the problem in an easy and correct way.