jQuery - rule for "does not contain element"

Question

I want to create a rule to match only on the following:

<ul id="root">
   <li>
      <a href="item.html">Root Menu Item</a>
   </li>
</ul>

However it must not match if the "li" element contains another "ul" element:

<ul id="root">
   <li>
      <a href="#">Sub Menu</a>
      <ul>
         <li>
            <a href="item.html">Sub Menu Item</a>
        </li>
      </ul>
   </li>
</ul>

The event for the rule is a click() function on the "a" element, I have created the event as required but need it to only work on the root menu items.

I know I can just add an id attribute to target the desired element only but the menu plugin that my client has installed is not easily configurable.

Answer 1

$('#root a').click(function(e) {
    if ( $(this).parents('ul').length > 1 ) {
       e.preventDefault(); // cancel action for anchors inside of #root who have multiple parent list elements 
    }
});

Change logic per requirement.

Answer 2

If you're matching the a do this:

var result  = $('#root > li:not(:has(ul)) > a');

• http://api.jquery.com/not-selector/
• http://api.jquery.com/has-selector/

If you want to allow deeper nested <ul> elements, and just want to check to make sure only the direct children don't have a <ul>, you could do this:

var result  = $('#root > li:not(:has(> ul)) > a');

---

EDIT:

To have more than one selector at the same time, separate them with a comma inside the quotes:

var result  = $('#root > li:not(:has(> ul)) > a, #someOtherElement');