Question

I’m having trouble changing text in an element that is near another element. The function is fairly straightforward, but for some reason I can’t get this text change to work.

When I click on #dislike_text, it goes blank (as it should), but the .like_text doesn’t change. Note that there is also a postlike function (identical to this one, but reversed, which works fine).

function postdislike(elm) {

    var comment_id = $(elm).attr('href');

    $('#stuff').load(// --function-- 

      function (data) {

        $('#dislike_text' + comment_id).html(""); //works fine
        $(elm).closest('.like_text').html('Like'); //doesn't work
    });
    return false;
}

Answer 1

closest goes up through the ancestor elements and finds the first that matches the selector. If there are no ancestor elements with the class like_text, no elements will be selected.

I presume you do not mean to blank an ancestor element, since that would have the effect of removing the #stuff element. You therefore need to find your way to the other element in some other way, using jQuery’s traversing functions. The most likely way to do this is to use closest to find a common ancestor, and then find to get the element itself. For instance:

$(elm).closest('div.someClass').find('.like_text').html('Like');