Question

Right now i am successfulling getting the value of an element by doing this:

var id = $(this).parent().parent().parent().parent().attr('id').toString();

However, I am now finding that i am going to have to continue getting values like this and was wondering if there is a more efficient way to look through parent elements for a given element.

Below i tried this, but it does not work:

var id = $(this).parent(4).attr('id').toString(); ???

Answer 1

You should use closest()

 var id = $(this).closest('#idofyourelement').attr('id').toString();

so you justneed to specify the id of the element you are lloking and closest() will

Get the first element that matches the selector, beginning at the
current element and progressing up through the DOM tree.

EDIT of course if you don’t know the id you can use a class

 var id = $(this).closest('.classOfYourElement').attr('id').toString();