jQuery first child of “this”

Question

I\'m trying to pass \"this\" from a clicked span to a jQuery function that can then execute jQuery on that clicked element\'s first child. Can\'t seem to get it right...

Answer 1

you can use DOM

$(this).children().first()
// is equivalent to
$(this.firstChild)

Answer 2

I've just written a plugin which uses .firstElementChild if possible, and falls back to iterating over each individual node if necessary:

(function ($) {
    var useElementChild = ('firstElementChild' in document.createElement('div'));

    $.fn.firstChild = function () {
        return this.map(function() {
            if (useElementChild) {
                return this.firstElementChild;
            } else {
                var node = this.firstChild;
                while (node) {
                    if (node.type === 1) {
                        break;
                    }
                    node = node.nextSibling;
                }
                return node;
            }
        });
    };
})(jQuery);

It's not as fast as a pure DOM solution, but in jsperf tests under Chrome 24 it was a couple of orders of magnitude faster than any other jQuery selector-based method.

Answer 3

This can be done with a simple magic like this:

$(":first-child", element).toggleClass("redClass");

Reference: http://www.snoopcode.com/jquery/jquery-first-child-selector

Answer 4

Have you tried

$(":first-child", element).toggleClass("redClass");

I think you want to set your element as a context for your search. There might be a better way to do this which some other jQuery guru will hop in here and throw out at you :)