jQuery - find 1st element with a specific class from above, but not before another element

Question

Hi!

The HTML looks something like this:

<li class="divider">
  <div>
    ...(maybe more divs)...      
      <div class="content">
         ...(maybe more divs)...
         <a href="#" class="link">LINK</a>

...

how can I select the .content DIV, from within a jQuery function hooked on the link? Note that I have multiple lists like this, and in some of them div.content might be missing, so I want to select this div only if it exists in the current block (li.divider).

I tried with $link.parent().parent().find('content') but it fails in some cases, because the number of elements between these 2 elements can change...

Answer 1

If they're not nested, you should be able to do this:

$('a.link').click(function() {
    $(this).closest('div.content');
});

or

$('a.link').click(function() {
    $(this).parents('div.content:first');
});

If they are nested, then you may need to do something like this:

$('a.link').click(function() {
    $(this).closest('li.divider').find('div.content');
});

...so that if there's nesting going on, and there's no div.content in the current one, you won't end up selecting a more distant div.content ancestor.

• http://api.jquery.com/closest/
• http://api.jquery.com/parents/

Answer 2

$link.parent(".content")?

Answer 3

Use the closest selector...

var parentContent = $(this).closest("div.content");

if(parentContent.length > 0) {
  alert("DIV was found!");
}