DOM Element Selection

The selector syntax used by jQuery is a combination of CSS1-3 and XPath selectors.

With jQuery you can select elements by attributes, element type, element position, CSS class, or a combination of these.

The syntax for selecting elements is as follows:

$(selector,[context])

jQuery(selector, [context])

To select elements by tag name, use the tag name in the selector. For example, $("div") retrieves all of the divs in a document.

 
<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html>
    <head>
        <script src="http://java2s.com/Book/JavaScriptDemo/jQuery/jquery-1.8.0.min.js"></script> 
        <script> 
            $(document).ready(function(){ 
                var wrappedElements = $("div"); 
                document.writeln(wrappedElements.length); 
            });
        </script> 
    </head> 
    <body>
        <div id="1"></div> 
        <div id="2"></div> 
        <div id="3"></div>
    </body> 
</html>

Click to view the demo

By default, when selecting elements, jQuery searches through the entire DOM tree. To search through a subtree of the DOM, pass an optional second parameter to the jQuery function to give the selection a context.

Retrieve from a series of links for a single div:

$("a","#div");

 
<html>
  <head>
    <style>
      .test{ border: 1px solid red; }
    </style>
    <script src="http://java2s.com/Book/JavaScriptDemo/jQuery/jquery-1.8.0.min.js"></script> 
    <script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function(){
           alert($(":hidden", document.body).length);
    });
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
      <span></span>
        <div></div>
        <div style="display:none;">Hider!</div>
        <div></div>
        <div></div>
        <form>
            <input type="hidden" />
            <input type="hidden" />
            <input type="hidden" />
        </form>
        <span></span>
  </body>
</html>

Click to view the demo

The basic CSS Selectors supported by jQuery

Selector	Description
*	Matches any element.
E	Matches element with tag name E.
E F	Matches elements with tag name F that are descendents of E.
E>F	Matches elements with tag name F that are direct children of E.
E+F	Matches elements F immediately preceded by sibling E.
E~F	Matches elements F preceded by any sibling E.
E:has(F)	Matches elements with tag name E that have at least one descendent with tag name F.
E.C	Matches elements E with class name C. Omitting E is the same as *.C.
E#I	Matches element E with id of I. Omitting E is the same as *#I.
E[A]	Matches elements E with attribute A of any value.
E[A=V]	Matches elements E with attribute A whose value is V.
E[A^=V]	Matches elements E with attribute A whose value begins with V.
E[A$=V]	Matches elements E with attribute A whose value ends with V.
E[A*=V]	Matches elements E with attribute A whose value contains V.

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