Question

I’ve got some elements like

<div id="myDiv">
    <p><input type="checkbox" />text</p>
    <p>special text</p>
    <p><input type="checkbox" />text</p>
    <p><input type="checkbox" />text</p>
</div>

My aim is to check the input-boxes below the ‘special text’.
Therefore I created a variable findText to find ‘special text’

var findText = $("#myDiv:contains('special text')");

I’m checking whether ‘special text’ exists and if so, I want the next input elements to be checked. .nextAll() unfortunately just gets the following siblings. But how can I call the next elements?

 var findText = $("#myDiv:contains('special text')");

    if(findText.length > 0) {
      findText.nextAll("input").attr("checked",true)
    }

Thank you for your time and help.

Answer 1

nextAll with a find should do it:

findText.nextAll("p").find("input").attr("checked",true);

That finds the following paragraphs, and their descendant inputs. (Or use children rather than find if the inputs are guaranteed to be immediate children of the paragraphs.)

…but I think your selector for findText is incorrect, try:

var findText = $("#myDiv p:contains('special text')");
//                      ^^^---- change here

Putting that all together:

var findText = $("#myDiv p:contains('special text')");

if(findText.length > 0) {
  findText.nextAll("p").find("input").attr("checked",true)
}

Live copy

Separately, you might consider limiting the search to just checkboxes with jQuery’s custom :checkbox selector:

var findText = $("#myDiv p:contains('special text')");

if(findText.length > 0) {
  findText.nextAll("p").find(":checkbox").attr("checked",true)
  //                         ^^^^^^^^^^^-- Change here
}

Live copy