Jquery select class from variable

Question

I am using Jquery to find a class by variable. So,

var className = "whatever";

$("#container ul li") if contains element with className, do this

How do I write the above code?

Is it

$("#container ul li").find("."+ className).each(function(){
console.log("I found one");
});

Obviously the code doesn't work

user113716 · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-16 23:47:46Z

26

Is the className on the <li> element? If so, you could do this:

$('#container ul li.' + className)...

You're just concatenating the className into the selector string (with the class selector).

Or this will give you the same result.

$('#container ul li').filter('.' + className)...

Which is the similar to your .find() solution, but uses .filter() to limit the <li> elements found to those with the className.

If the element with the className is a descendant of the <li> element, then using .find() should work, or you could do:

$('#container ul li .' + className)...

...which almost looks the same as the one above, but introduces a space after li, which is a descendant selector.

answered Oct 16, 2010 at 23:41

user113716

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1 Comment

The filter solution works. Thanks for clarifying that find() is used to find descendants!