Question

how do i get a reference to the element that matched? ‘this’ is not correct.

For example here I am trying to alert with the elements value.

//how do i get this to reference the object it matches.
$("#txtFirstName,#txtLastName,#txtDOB").each(
    function() { alert(this.val()); }
);

Answer 1

Try:

$("#txtFirstName,#txtLastName,#txtDOB").each(
    function() { alert( $(this).val() ); }
);