jQuery to find all previous elements that match an expression

Question

Using jQuery, how do you match elements that are prior to the current element in the DOM tree? Using prevAll() only matches previous siblings.<

Answer 1

had the same problem, heres what i came up with. my function uses compareDocumentPosition. dont know how it compares to the other solutions in terms of performance though.

$.fn.findNext = function ( selector ) {
  var found, self = this.get(0);
  $( selector )
    .each( function () {
      if ( self.compareDocumentPosition( this ) === 4 ){ 
        found = this; 
        return false;
      }    
    })
  return $(found);
}

of course one could change this quite easily to fetch ALL elements following the calling element.

$.fn.nextALL= function ( selector ) {
  var found = [], self = this.get(0);
  $( selector )
    .each( function () {
      if ( self.compareDocumentPosition( this ) === 4 )
        found.push(this);          
    })
  return $(found);
}

EDIT: streamlined version

$.fn.findNext = function( s ){
    var m = this[0], f=function(n){return m.compareDocumentPosition(n)===4;};
    return this.pushStack( $(s).get().filter(f) );
}