Traversing 9 levels up in jQuery

Question

Hi,

A click event occurs on a href tag, and I need to reference the class of a that is 9 levels up,

so:

<div class="blah" id="234">
 <div>
     <div>
        <div>
          <div>
            <div>
             <div><a href=""></a>

The only way I know is to call parent() 9 times, what else can I do?

Answer 1

You can supply a selector via the parents function

$(a).click(function() {
   var theIdIs = $(this).parents("div.blah").attr("id");
});

Answer 2

Also if your using jQuery 1.3+ you can use the closest method

$('a').click(function() {
   if ($(this).closest("div.blah").hasClass("blah"))
   {
      // Do something with it
   }
});