Is anybody working on a jQuery.closest() equivalent in the DOM api?
Looks like the Selectors Level 2 draft adds matches()
equivalent to jQuery.is(), so native closest should be much easier to write. Has adding closest()
to Selectors come up?
Is anybody working on a jQuery.closest() equivalent in the DOM api?
Looks like the Selectors Level 2 draft adds matches()
equivalent to jQuery.is(), so native closest should be much easier to write. Has adding closest()
to Selectors come up?
Element.closest()
its support
Implementing such function with Element.matches() seems not optimal in terms of performance, cause apparently matches() will make a call to querySelectorAll() every time you test a parent, while only one call is sufficient for the job.
Here's a polyfill for closest() on MDN. Note a single call to querySelectorAll()
if (window.Element && !Element.prototype.closest) {
Element.prototype.closest =
function(s) {
var matches = (this.document || this.ownerDocument).querySelectorAll(s),
i,
el = this;
do {
i = matches.length;
while (--i >= 0 && matches.item(i) !== el) {};
} while ((i < 0) && (el = el.parentElement));
return el;
};
}
But bear in mind that function implemented like this will not work properly on unattached tree (detached from document.documentElement root)
//Element.prototype.closestTest = function(s){...as seen above...};
var detachedRoot = document.createElement("footer");
var child = detachedRoot.appendChild(document.createElement("div"));
detachedRoot.parentElement; //null
child.closestTest("footer"); //null
document.documentElement.append(detachedRoot);
child.closestTest("footer"); //<footer>
Though closest() that is implemented in Firefox 51.0.1 seems to work fine with detached tree
document.documentElement.removeChild(detachedRoot);
child.closestTest("footer"); //null
child.closest("footer"); //<footer>
Building off of Alnitak's answer. Here's the working current implementation with matchesSelector
which is now matches
in the DOM spec.
// get nearest parent element matching selector
function closest(el, selector) {
var matchesSelector = el.matches || el.webkitMatchesSelector || el.mozMatchesSelector || el.msMatchesSelector;
while (el) {
if (matchesSelector.call(el, selector)) {
break;
}
el = el.parentElement;
}
return el;
}
Browser support is great: http://caniuse.com/matchesselector
Seems like Chrome 40 will bring a native element.closest()
method (http://blog.chromium.org/2014/12/chrome-40-beta-powerful-offline-and.html) specified here: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#dom-element-closest
This sounds like it ought to be pretty easy, given the matches
function, although that's not widely supported yet:
function closest(elem, selector) {
while (elem) {
if (elem.matches(selector)) {
return elem;
} else {
elem = elem.parentElement;
}
}
return null;
}
The trouble is, the matches
function isn't properly supported. As it's still a relatively new API it's available as webkitMatchesSelector
in Chrome and Safari, and mozMatchesSelector
in Firefox.
Using element.closest() we can find Closest ancestor matching selector. This method takes selectors list as parameter and returns the closest ancestor. As per Rob's Comment this API will be available from chrome 41 and FF 35.
As explained in whatwg specs https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#dom-element-closest
Example: The below HTML will show alert message "true"
<html>
<body>
<foo>
<bar>
<a id="a">
<b id="b">
<c id="c"></c>
</b>
</a>
</bar>
</foo>
<script>
var a = document.getElementById('a');
var b = document.getElementById('b');
var c = document.getElementById('c');
alert(c.closest("a, b")==b);
</script>
</body>
</html>
A little recursion will do the trick.
// get nearest parent element matching selector
var closest = (function() {
var matchesSelector = el.matches || el.webkitMatchesSelector || el.mozMatchesSelector || el.msMatchesSelector;
return function closest(el, selector) {
return !el ? null :
matchesSelector.call(el, selector) ? el : closest(el.parentElement, selector);
};
})();