Question

Is there a shorter way to write this?

$myelements.find('*').andSelf().filter(myselector)

As far as I can tell, there’s no way to search all descendants, including itself, without doing this?

If there’s no function for this, I’ll write one, but I don’t want to reinvent the wheel if it already exists.

---

Here it is (revised):

(function($,undefined) {
    $.fn.all = function(selector) {
        if(selector===undefined) return this.find('*').andSelf();
        return this.find(selector).add(this.filter(selector));
    }
})(jQuery);

Answer 1

No there isn’t a way to do it in the API, though I think you may get better performance results if you do a normal .find() with a selector, then apply the .filter() only to the element itself.

var all = $myelements.find(myselector).add( $myelements.filter(myselector) );

This way, querySelectorAll can be used if you’re using a valid selector.

Otherwise, you’re doing the filter entirely with JavaScript code instead of native code (in supported browsers).

Of course you can make it into a plugin as well.