Question

Is there a way to make the selector below better?
Without adding extra classes or id’s?
Only select the first item-2 counted from item-5 downwards.
This works, but there has to be an easier way.

$first_previous = $($('li.item-5').prevAll('.item-2')[0]);

<ul>
   <li class="item-1">list item 1</li>
   <li class="item-2">Unkown number of item-2 will happen</li>
   <li class="item-2">Unkown number of item-2 will happen</li>
   <li class="item-2">list item 2 Only select this one, not the other #2</li>
   <li class="item-3">list item 3</li>
   <li class="item-4">list item 4</li>
   <li class="item-5">list item 5 Start here</li>
   <li class="item-2">it might even occur after the item-5</li>
</ul>

Answer 1

You could try :

$(this).siblings('.item-2').eq(1);

(Where $(this) is a jQuery object containing an element with a class of .item-5)

But you will want to use something like http://jsperf.com/ to find out which way is quicker !

Working example here

Update

Then try this :

$(this).siblings('.item-2').last();

Docs for .last()

OK … then try :

$(this).prev('.item-2')

Uses.prev()

Update 2

Loop the items and get the first which will be the one you want :

$('.item-5').prevAll().each(function() {
    if ($(this).hasClass('item-2')) {
        alert($(this).text());
        return false; // break early
    }
});​

Example here