Is there such thing as a relative jQuery selector?

Question

I have a reference to a jquery object with the this variable. I am looking for a way of applying the child selector to the object.

I'm using $(this).find('table > tbody > tr > td'), but what I'm aiming for is something more like $('[Value of $(this) goes here somehow] > table > tbody > tr > td').

I realise that I can do $(this).children('table').children('tbody').children('tr').children('td'), but I was wondering if there was some syntactic sugar I could use here.

Answer 1

You can start with a child selector (>) when using .find() as well, like this:

$(this).find('> table > tbody > tr > td')

It's an often overlooked use case, but it works just great for what you're after.

Answer 2

As Nick said, you can use find(), or you can use selector context:

$('> table > tbody > tr > td', this)

// Is the equivalent of
$(this).find('> table > tbody > tr > td')