Question

I have a situation where all my selectors all have the same ancestor element

$('#foo .bar')...
$('#foo .some_class')...
$('#foo .some_other_class')...

I was wondering if there was a way to tell jQuery to always assume the selector will descend from #foo? So something like

$.ancestorWillAlwaysBe('#foo');
$('.bar')...
$('.some_class')...
$('.some_other_class')...

Answer 1

Looks like you are lazy to type all those #foo. Here’s a way to do that in a simpler way:

var e = $("#foo");  //short enough
$('.bar', e);
$('.some_class', e);
$('.some_other_class', e);

Or if you really that lazy, you can do this:

$ = function(que, anc){
    if($.ancestor){
        return jQuery(que, $.ancestor);
    }else{
        return jQuery(que, anc);
    }
}

$.ancestor = "#foo";  //Ancestor will now always be #foo
$('.bar')...
$('.some_class')...
$('.some_other_class')...
$.ancestor = undefined;  //Clear

DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/DerekL/agnHy/