Question

I am stuck trying to apply a class to a surrounding list element based on the id of the link element contained inside :

var itemId = 1; // set itemid from current url 

var tabId = 'tab'+itemId; // set tabid based on itemid e.g a#tab1, a#tab2 ...

 // add class selected to li containing tabid

$("#tabs ul li").each(function(){

    $(this).has("a#" + tabId + "").addClass("selected");

});

Help appreciated!

Answer 1

You can use

var tabId = "tab1";
$("#tabs ul li:has(a#"+tabId+")").addClass("selected");

Working Demo http://jsfiddle.net/f6nPx/

A faster way to do (almost) the same thing

$("#"+tabId).closest("li").addClass("selected");