Question

I have something like this:

<ul>
  <li>
    <ul class="horizontal">
      <li>something</li>
      <li>something</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>
    <ul class="horizontal">
      <li>something</li>
      <li>something</li>
      <li>something</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
<ul>

To count a li i use:

var CountLength = $('.horizontal li').length;

It is returning 5 but that’s the total of all ul.horizontal elements. What i want to know is how do i get it to count the largest ul element.

Answer 1

You could iterate over the set of .horizontal elements and compare the number of children each has with the current longest:

var longest = 0;
$(".horizontal").each(function() {
    var thisLength = $(this).children().length;
    if(thisLength > longest) {
        longest = thisLength;  
    }
});

Here’s a working example.