Question

How do I get the string ‘unenable-item’ assuming that it is used as part of the string in a selector such as:

$('.unenable-item').click(function(){
  alert($(this).val());
});

thx

Answer 1

$('.unenable-item').click(function(){
  alert($(this).attr("class"));
});

Or more generic way

$('.unenable-item').click(function(){
  alert($('.unenable-item').selector);
});

In this case you will get .unenable-item and you must work with that string and get substring that you want.

EDIT:

.selector property can’t work with $(this) and will return always empty string, because it making new object every time. So I find solution to work with that. The solution is to make new function for binding events and use that function instead of simple jquery functions.

Usage

jQuery.fn.addEvent = function(type, handler) {
    this.bind(type, {'selector': this.selector}, handler);
};

And after this you can simply get your selector

$('.unenable-item').addEvent('click', function(event) {
        alert(event.data.selector);
});

Note, that I used addEvent method for binding click, instead of immediately binding by Jquery’s click function.

You can see example in jsfiddle http://jsfiddle.net/DFh7z/21/