Select first sibling.

Answer 1

$( 'td:first-child', $( this ).parents ( 'tr' ) ).html ();

This will select the first TD element (:first-child filter) in the parent TR of the image. parents() returns all parents of the element, and we filter the parents so that only TR elements are returned.

Also try writing your image like so:

<img src="bobsmith.png" onclick="doSomething(this)" />

and your function like so:

function doSomething ( imgEl ) {
}

and use imgEl instead of this

Answer 2

$('tr td:last-child img').click(function(){

    alert($('td:first-child',$(this).closest('tr')).text());

});

Answer 3

I would set up an event using jQuery, but that's totally up to you.

$("table td:last img").click(function() {
    var firstTd = $(this).parents("tr").find("td:first").html();
    alert("you clicked person #" + firstTd);
}); 

No matter what, you can still use this example with your own code:

function doSomething()
{
    var firstTd = $(this).parents("tr").find("td:first-child").html();
    alert("you clicked person #" + firstTd);
}

---

You're right. 'this' is not being passed, you need to edit the html to make that work. Or just use jQuery instead as show above.

Answer 4

maybe this will help somebody. This is just a part of the whole article here.

The difference

If you want to use this for accessing the HTML element that is handling the event, you must make sure that the this keyword is actually written into the onclick property. Only in that case does it refer to the HTML element the event handler is registered to. So if you do

element.onclick = doSomething;
alert(element.onclick)

you get

function doSomething()
{
    this.style.color = '#cc0000';
}

As you can see, the this keyword is present in the onclick method. Therefore it refers to the HTML element.

But if you do

<element onclick="doSomething()">
alert(element.onclick)

you get

function onclick()
{
    doSomething()
}

This is merely a reference to function doSomething(). The this keyword is not present in the onclick method so it doesn't refer to the HTML element.