jQuery - get the index of a element with a certain class

Question

I have a list like this one:

 .... 
 .... 
 .... 
 .... 
         


        

Answer 1

With the .index() :

$('li.active').index()

Working example here:

http://jsfiddle.net/EcZZL/

Edit - added link to the api for .index() per Nick's advice

Answer 2

Like this:

var index = $("ul li.active").index();

.index() without parameters gives the index of the element with respect to it's siblings, which is what you want in this case.