Question

I looked at JQuery documentation, read FAQ and saw a lot of examples. It looks like to get a set of all elements in the document that is described by a rule, you code

$(rule)

where rule is a string whose syntax is described here. Document seems to be a hidden input parameter. Can I do the same with a subtree of the DOM? If I have a DOM element, can I code something like

element.$(rule)

?

Answer 1

$(rule, element)

From the docs:

jQuery(expression, context)

The core functionality of jQuery
centers around this function.
Everything in jQuery is based upon
this, or uses this in some way. The
most basic use of this function is to
pass in an expression (usually
consisting of CSS), which then finds
all matching elements.

By default, if no context is
specified, $() looks for DOM elements
within the context of the current HTML
document. If you do specify a context,
such as a DOM element or jQuery
object, the expression will be matched
against the contents of that context.

See Selectors for the allowed CSS
syntax for expressions.