Question

I need to retrieve the element with specific class which is placed below in DOM. For example:

<div>
    <a onclick="someMethod(this)">
</div>
<div class="specificClass">
</div>

In someMethod I have the anchor but need to retrieve the first element with class “specificClass” which is placed below.

Update. The position of <div class="specificClass"> is not specified. The only thing I know – it is placed below

Answer 1

DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/reKwQ/1/

Instead of using the onclick attribute, give your anchor a class or ID:

<div>
    <a class="someClass">
</div>
<div class="specificClass"></div>

Then bind a click event to it using jQuery and go from there:

$('a.someClass').click(function() {
    var $elements = $('a.someClass, .specificClass');

    var foundThis = false,
        $nextSpecificClass = null,
        $this = $(this);

    $elements.each(function() {
        var $element = $(this);
        if (foundThis === false && $element[0] == $this[0]) {
            foundThis = true;
        } else if (foundThis === true && $element.is('.specificClass')) {
            $nextSpecificClass = $element;
            return false;
        }
    });

    // Do something  with $nextSpecificClass here

    return false;
});

This works because you have a list of matched elements containing both the anchor and target elements, that will be in the order of discovery.

Once we find the thing we clicked on, we can accept the next available .specificClass element as our result.

DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/reKwQ/1/