jQuery traversal - descendants


jQuery Traversal - Descendants

Descendants are children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.

With jQuery, you can traverse down the DOM tree to find the descendants of an element.

Traverse the DOM tree

The following are two jQuery method for traversing down the DOM tree:

children()

find()

jQuery children() method

The children() method returns all direct child elements of the selected element.

This method will only traverse the DOM tree one level down.

The following example returns all direct child elements of each <div> element:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
.descendants *
{ 
	display: block;
	border: 2px solid lightgrey;
	color: lightgrey;
	padding: 5px;
	margin: 15px;
}
</style>
<script src="http://libs.baidu.com/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
	$("div").children().css({"color":"red","border":"2px solid red"});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>

<div class="descendants" style="width:500px;">div (当前元素) 
  <p>p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>     
  </p>
  <p>p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>
  </p> 
</div>

</body>
</html>

Run Example »

Click the "Run Example" button to view an online example

You can also use optional parameters to filter the search for child elements.

The following example returns all <p> elements with class name "1" that are direct children of <div>:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
.descendants *
{ 
	display: block;
	border: 2px solid lightgrey;
	color: lightgrey;
	padding: 5px;
	margin: 15px;
}
</style>
<script src="http://libs.baidu.com/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("div").children("p.1").css({"color":"red","border":"2px solid red"});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>

<div class="descendants" style="width:500px;">div (当前元素) 
  <p class="1">p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>     
  </p>
  <p class="2">p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>
  </p> 
</div>

</body>
</html>

Run Instance»

Click the "Run Instance" button to view the online instance

##jQuery find() method

find() method returns the descendant elements of the selected element, all the way down to the last offspring.

The following example returns all <span> elements that are descendants of <div>:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
.descendants *
{ 
	display: block;
	border: 2px solid lightgrey;
	color: lightgrey;
	padding: 5px;
	margin: 15px;
}
</style>
<script src="http://libs.baidu.com/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("div").find("span").css({"color":"red","border":"2px solid red"});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>

<div class="descendants" style="width:500px;">div (当前元素) 
  <p>p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>     
  </p>
  <p>p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>
  </p> 
</div>

</body>
</html>

Run Instance»Click the "Run Instance" button to view the online instance

The following example returns all descendants of <div>:

Instance

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
.descendants *
{ 
	display: block;
	border: 2px solid lightgrey;
	color: lightgrey;
	padding: 5px;
	margin: 15px;
}
</style>
<script src="http://libs.baidu.com/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("div").find("*").css({"color":"red","border":"2px solid red"});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>

<div class="descendants" style="width:500px;">div (当前元素) 
  <p>p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>     
  </p>
  <p>p (儿子元素)
    <span>span (孙子元素)</span>
  </p> 
</div>

</body>
</html>

Run Instance»Click the "Run Instance" button to view the online instance