Question

Possible Duplicate:
jQuery $(this) vs this

In jquery sometimes I find that within a function I have to use $(this) because this won’t work:

var listItems = $('li');
listItems.each(function(index) {
    $(this).css({ 

    })
})

Any ideas as to the reason why?

Answer 1

• $() is the jQuery constructor function
• this is a reference to the DOM element of invocation

So basically, you’re turning a DOM reference into a jQuery object

In your example, you could also use

listItems.each(function(index, element){
   $(element).css({
   });
});

..since .each() will pass both, index + element in its callback.