Question

I want to select only the first level of ‘td’ elements in a table and not the cells of any nested tables. eg:

<table id='Outer'>     <tr>          <td> --this one         </td>           <td> --this one             <table>                 <tr>                     <td></td> -- but not this one or any deeper nested cells                 </tr>             </table>         </td>      </tr>  </table> 

(and yes in prod code i would include tbody, thead…)

Answer 1

I’d use the children selector, which only selects the immediate children matching the expression. To make it easy to select just the outer table, I’d give it a name. NOTE: this won’t work with your sample as I’ve added in the selectors for thead, tbody, and tfoot as you indicate you will have in production. Adjust accordingly for your sample.

$('table#namedTable').children('tbody,thead,tfoot')                      .children('tr')                      .children('td')