How to subfilter a jquery object which is a subset of $(this)

Question

I've read the documentation over and over and I can't get why this doesn't work:

From inside a function, calling the following:

alert($(this).parent().parent().html());

returns something looking like this:

<div class="something1">
    <div class="whereThisStarted">stuff</div>
    </div>
<div class="something2">stuff</div>
<div class="somethingSpecial">stuff</div>
<div class="something4">stuff</div>

I want to get "somethingSpecial". It would seem to me that either of the following should work but they both return null.

alert($(this).parent().parent().children(".somethingSpecial").html());
alert($(this).parent().parent().filter("div.somethingSpecial").html());

What's wrong with this?

Thanks

Answer 1

if you really must do it the way you want and not how TStamper showed, try this:

alert($(this).parent().parent().find("div.somethingSpecial").html());

Answer 2

You might want to try the closest function- it sounds like it's more along the lines of what you are trying to do:

jquery doc - closest()

This code should work:

alert($(this).closest(".somethingSpecial").html());

Or in the case that your $(this) is within the 'startHere' div:

alert($(this).parent().closest(".somethingSpecial").html());

Answer 3

I'm not sure why children("div.somethingSpecial") alone doesn't work but I just realized that this works also:

alert($(this).parent().parent().children().filter("div.charactersLeft").html());