jQuery: How to get to a particular child of a parent?

Question

To give a simplified example, I've got the following block repeated on the page lots of times (it's dynamically generated):

<div class="box"> <div class="something1"></div> <div class="something2"> <a class="mylink">My link</a> </div> </div>

When clicked, I can get to the parent of the link with:

$(".mylink").click(function() { $(this).parents(".box").fadeOut("fast"); });

However... I need to get to the <div class="something1"> of that particular parent.

Basically, can someone tell me how to refer to a higher-level sibling without being able to refer to it directly? Let's call it big brother. A direct reference to the big brother's class name would cause every instance of that element on the page to fade out - which is not the desired effect.

I've tried:

parents(".box .something1") ... no luck. parents(".box > .something1") ... no luck. siblings() ... no luck.

Anyone? Thanks.

Anurag's answer might not seem like the right one -it certainly made me stop and think- but it's pointing out a blatant typo in your code that's causing your selector to fail. The selector, in jQuery, is .parent() not .parents() — David Thomas
– David Thomas, Commented Mar 8, 2010 at 2:29
@ricebowl... parent() would give me div something2, so I need parents() to get to div box. — Tom
– Tom, Commented Mar 8, 2010 at 2:31
Ah; my apologies. Umm...I don't know whether it's best to leave my ignorance on display, or delete the error to avoid upsetting anyone else... =| Still, at least I've learned something useful today; that's the point, right..? =) — David Thomas
– David Thomas, Commented Mar 8, 2010 at 2:36

SLaks · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-08 02:27:24Z

165

Calling .parents(".box .something1") will return all parent elements that match the selector .box .something. In other words, it will return parent elements that are .something1 and are inside of .box.

You need to get the children of the closest parent, like this:

$(this).closest('.box').children('.something1')

This code calls .closest to get the innermost parent matching a selector, then calls .children on that parent element to find the uncle you're looking for.

answered Mar 8, 2010 at 2:27

SLaks

891k182 gold badges1.9k silver badges2k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

7 Comments

rmorse Over a year ago

I know this is a bit old but isn't it better in this case to use parent() rather than closest() as I imagine there is more tree traversal with closest()?

SLaks Over a year ago

@acSlater: He needs tree traversal. parent() is the wrong element.

rmorse Over a year ago

Ah yes it's parent().parent() that Tom needs sorry! :)

SLaks Over a year ago

@acSlater: Yes; that would work. However, it makes the Javascript much more coupled to the HTML structure. .closest(...) is more resilient, and more readable too.

Fabien Snauwaert Over a year ago

In case anyone is wondering: after you've found the right parent using .closest(), if you're looking for a child element that is NOT a direct child (but a child of a child, for example), just use .find() in place of .children.

|

Anurag · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-08 02:39:28Z

$(this).parent()

Tree traversal is fun

$(this).parent().siblings(".something1"); $(this).parent().prev(); // if you always want the parent's previous sibling $(this).parents(".box").children(".something1");

And much more ways, you might find these docs helpful.

Thanks but wasn't looking for the parent, but rather another child of parent (or grandparent actually).

user2601995 · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-06 03:04:29Z

This will find the first parent with class box then find the first child class with regex matching something and get the id.

$(".mylink").closest(".box").find('[class*="something"]').first().attr("id")

Teja Kantamneni · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-08 02:33:50Z

If I understood your problem correctly, $(this).parents('.box').children('.something1') Is this what you are looking for?

Olly · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-25 22:36:33Z

You could use .each() with .children() and a selector within the parenthesis:

//Grab Each Instance of Box. $(".box").each(function(i){ //For Each Instance, grab a child called .something1. Fade It Out. $(this).children(".something1").fadeOut(); });

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

jQuery: How to get to a particular child of a parent?

5 Answers 5

7 Comments

2 Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

5 Answers 5

7 Comments

2 Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Linked

Related