Question

I thought this could be achieved with the .prev() function but for some reason it isn’t working.

I’m creating thumbs up/down buttons for posts on a blog. I’m trying to display messages according to what the user votes. Either UP or DOWN but whenever I vote 1 particular post, the message appears for all the post.

This is my code. I removed the prev() attempts to make it more readable. The script works fine ajax wise.

$(document).ready(function() {
    $(".vote_button").click(function(e) { //the UP or DOWN vote button
    var vote_status = $(this).attr('class').split(' ')[1]; //gets second class name following vote_button
    var vote_post_id = $(this).attr("id"); //the post ID
    var dataString = 'post_id=' + vote_post_id + '&vote_status=' + vote_status;

    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "url/add_vote.php",
        data: dataString,
        cache: false,
        success: function(html) {
            if (vote_status == 1) 
         {
                $('.msg_box').fadeIn(200);
                $('.msg_box').text('You voted UP!');
            }
            if (vote_status == 2) 
         {
                $('.msg_box').fadeIn(200);
                $('.msg_box').text('You voted DOWN!');
            }
        }
    });
    return false;
});
});

Sample HTML

<div class="vote_button 1" id="18">UP</div>
<div class="vote_button 2" id="77">DOWN</div>
<div class="msg_box"></div>

<div class="vote_button 1" id="43">UP</div>
<div class="vote_button 2" id="15">DOWN</div>
<div class="msg_box"></div>


<div class="vote_button 1" id="11">UP</div>
<div class="vote_button 2" id="78">DOWN</div>
<div class="msg_box"></div>

EDIT: Provided jsfiddle without Ajax part
http://jsfiddle.net/XJeXw/

Answer 1

You need to save a reference to the button inside the click handler (eg, var me = $(this);), then use me.nextAll('.msg_box:first') inside the AJAX handler.

EDIT: Example:

var me = $(this);   //The this will be different inside the AJAX callback

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "url/add_vote.php",
    data: dataString,
    cache: false,
    success: function(html) {
        me.nextAll('.msg_box:first')
            .text(vote_status == 1 ? 'You voted UP!' : 'You voted DOWN!')
            .fadeIn(200);
    }
});