Description: Get the descendants of each element in the current set of matched elements, filtered by a selector.
selectorA string containing a selector expression to match elements against.
Given a jQuery object that represents a set of DOM elements, the .find()
method allows us to search through the descendants of these elements in the DOM tree and construct a new jQuery object from the matching elements. The .find()
and .children()
methods are similar, except that the latter only travels a single level down the DOM tree.
The method accepts a selector expression of the same type that we can pass to the $() function. The elements will be filtered by testing whether they match this selector.
Consider a page with a basic nested list on it:
<ul class="level-1"> <li class="item-i">I</li> <li class="item-ii">II <ul class="level-2"> <li class="item-a">A</li> <li class="item-b">B <ul class="level-3"> <li class="item-1">1</li> <li class="item-2">2</li> <li class="item-3">3</li> </ul> </li> <li class="item-c">C</li> </ul> </li> <li class="item-iii">III</li> </ul>
If we begin at item II, we can find list items within it:
$('li.item-ii').find('li').css('background-color', 'red');
The result of this call is a red background on items A, B, 1, 2, 3, and C. Even though item II matches the selector expression, it is not included in the results; only descendants are considered candidates for the match.
As discussed in “The jQuery Factory Function” section above, selector context is implemented with the .find()
method;
therefore, $('li.item-ii').find('li')
is equivalent to $('li', 'li.item-ii')
.
.find()
. If we need to retrieve all of the descendant elements, we can pass in the universal selector '*'
to accomplish this.<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<p><span>Hello</span>, how are you?</p>
<p>Me? I'm <span>good</span>.</p>
<script>$("p").find("span").css('color','red');</script>
</body>
</html>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
p { font-size:20px; width:200px; cursor:default;
color:blue; font-weight:bold; margin:0 10px; }
.hilite { background:yellow; }
</style>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<p>
When the day is short
find that which matters to you
or stop believing
</p>
<script>
var newText = $("p").text().split(" ").join("</span> <span>");
newText = "<span>" + newText + "</span>";
$("p").html(newText)
.find('span')
.hover(function () { $(this).addClass("hilite"); },
function () { $(this).removeClass("hilite"); })
.end()
.find(":contains('t')")
.css({"font-style":"italic", "font-weight":"bolder"});
</script>
</body>
</html>