Finding appropriate parent with jQuery

Question

Given a DOM element how do I find its nearest parent with a given css class?

$(".editButton").click(function() {
   (magic container selector goes here).addClass("editing");
});

I don't want to use lots or $(...).parent().parent() since I don't want to be bound to a particular dom structure.

Answer 1

This should work

$(this).parents('.classYouWant:first').addClass("editing");

Answer 2

Use .parents(".yourClass") instead of .parent() http://docs.jquery.com/Traversing/parents#expr

Answer 3

You can use the parent selection. eg $(".myclass:parent").something(); will find all the elements with the class myclass that have children.