Question

We have:

<div class="companylinks">
   <span class="current">
      <a class="welcome">Welcome!</a>
   </span>
   <span>
      <a class="ic_generalinfo">General Info</a>
   </span>
</div>

I want to get the class of the <a> which is in the <span class="current"> (here is ‘welcome’)

var selected_tab = $('#companylinks span[class="current"]').closest('a').attr('class');
alert(selected_tab);

But I’m getting ‘undefined’, how I should ise closest() here?

I would appreciate any help.
Thanks

Answer 1

.closest() goes up the parent chain, not down the parent chain.

To specify multiple parents that all must be satisfied in a selector, you can just list them separately in the selector separated by spaces. In this case you can target the <a>tag inside of .current and then obtain its class like this:

$(".current a").attr("class");

Or, if you want to scope it only to inside of .companylinks, then you can use this;

$(".companylinks .current a").attr("class");

Note: You don’t need to use span[class=".current"]. You can just use .current.