jQuery to find all previous elements that match an expression

Question

Using jQuery, how do you match elements that are prior to the current element in the DOM tree? Using prevAll() only matches previous siblings.

eg:

<table>
    <tr>
        <td class="findme">find this one</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td><a href="#" class="myLinks">find the previous .findme</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td class="findme">don't find this one</td>
    </tr>
</table>

In my specific case, I'll be searching for the first .findme element prior to the link clicked.

Answer 1

Presumably you are doing this inside an onclick handler so you have access to the element that was clicked. What I would do is do a prevAll to see if it is at the same level. If not, then I would do a parent().prevAll() to get the previous siblings of the parent element, then iterate through those backwards, checking their contents for the desired element. Continue going up the DOM tree until you find what you want or hit the root of the DOM. This a general algorithm.

If you know that it is inside a table, then you can simply get the row containing the element clicked and iterate backwards through the rows of the table from that row until you find one that contains the element desired.

I don't think there is a way to do it in one (chained) statement.

Answer 2

edit: this solution works for both your original problem, the problem you mention in your first comment, and the problem you detail in the comment after that.

$('.myLinks').click(function() {
    var findMe = '';

    $(this).parents().each(function() {
        var a = $(this).find('.findme').is('.findme');
        var b = $(this).find('.myLinks').is('.myLinks');
        if (a && b) {                             // look for first parent that
                                                  // contains .findme and .myLinks
            $(this).find('*').each(function() {
                var name = $(this).attr('class');
                if ( name == 'findme') {
                    findMe = $(this);             // set element to last matching
                                                  // .findme
                }
                if ( name == 'myLinks')    {
                    return false;                 // exit from the mess once we find
                                                  // .myLinks
                }
            });
            return false;
        }   
    });
    alert(findMe.text() );               // alerts "find this one"
});

this works for your example in the OP as well as a modified example as explained in the comments:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td class="findme">don't find this one</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="findme">find this one</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><a href="#" class="myLinks">find the previous .findme</a></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="findme">don't find this one</td>
  </tr>
</table>

as well as this test case which you added:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td class="findme">don't find this one</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="findme">don't find this one</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="findme">find this one</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<a href="#" class="myLinks">find the previous .findme</a>

Answer 3

Ok, here's what I've come up with - hopefully it'll be useful in many different situations. It's 2 extensions to jQuery that I call prevALL and nextALL. While the standard prevAll() matches previous siblings, prevALL() matches ALL previous elements all the way up the DOM tree, similarly for nextAll() and nextALL().

I'll try to explain it in the comments below:

// this is a small helper extension i stole from
// http://www.texotela.co.uk/code/jquery/reverse/
// it merely reverses the order of a jQuery set.
$.fn.reverse = function() {
    return this.pushStack(this.get().reverse(), arguments);
};

// create two new functions: prevALL and nextALL. they're very similar, hence this style.
$.each( ['prev', 'next'], function(unusedIndex, name) {
    $.fn[ name + 'ALL' ] = function(matchExpr) {
        // get all the elements in the body, including the body.
        var $all = $('body').find('*').andSelf();

        // slice the $all object according to which way we're looking
        $all = (name == 'prev')
             ? $all.slice(0, $all.index(this)).reverse()
             : $all.slice($all.index(this) + 1)
        ;
        // filter the matches if specified
        if (matchExpr) $all = $all.filter(matchExpr);
        return $all;
    };
});

usage:

$('.myLinks').click(function() {
    $(this)
        .prevALL('.findme:first')
        .html("You found me!")
    ;

    // set previous nodes to blue
    $(this).prevALL().css('backgroundColor', 'blue');

    // set following nodes to red
    $(this).nextALL().css('backgroundColor', 'red');
});

---

edit - function rewritten from scratch. I just thought of a much quicker and simpler way to do it. Take a look at the edit history to see my first iteration.

edit again - found an easier way to do it!