I'm trying to figure out how this jQuery plugin works: http://codeasily.com/jquery/multi-column-list-with-jquery
In the plugin there is this line at the beginning:
if(jQuery('> li', this)) {
I know what
ul > li
means: it means select all li whose direct parent is a ul. But what does '> li' mean? I ran:
$('> li')
but it returns
[]
even though I have plenty of nested unordered list HTML on the page.
Don't use it. The docs advise that you shouldn't use at as it will be soon deprecated.
From http://api.jquery.com/child-selector/
Note: The $("> elem", context)
selector will be deprecated in a future release. Its usage is thus discouraged in lieu of using alternative selectors.
But to answer, it effectively uses the element(s) from which the selector is called as the left hand operand of the child-selector.
The 2nd parameter to the jQuery
function is the context.
jQuery('> li', this)
Is the same as:
jQuery(this).find('> li')
It's the same as $(this).children('li')
. It's basically saying "use this
as the context for the selector (> li
)".
its jsut like ul > li
except that in this case you are replacing the ul
part with the current context which is this
. So whatever this
is in the scope of that call that is the element you are resolving the > li
to.
So for example:
var ele = $('ul#someId');
var list = $('> li', ele);
var list2 = $('ul#someId > li');
// list is the same as list2
It will look for li
element in the immediate children within this
element where this
can be a jQuery object or DOM element.
The selector is looking for any immediate <li>
children in the context of the this
DOM element