Here's how you get the closest element by tag name without jQuery:
function getClosest(el, tag) {
// this is necessary since nodeName is always in upper case
tag = tag.toUpperCase();
do {
if (el.nodeName === tag) {
// tag name is found! let's return it. :)
return el;
}
} while (el = el.parentNode);
// not found :(
return null;
}
getClosest(th, 'tbody');
function findNearest(el, tag) {
while( el && el.tagName && el.tagName !== tag.toUpperCase()) {
el = el.nextSibling;
} return el;
}
Only finds siblings further down the tree. Use previousSibling to go the other way
Or use variables to traverse both ways and return whichever is found first.
You get the general idea, but if you want to traverse through parentNodes or children if a sibling doesn't match you may as-well use jQuery. At that point it's easily worth it.
There exists a standardised function to do this: Element.closest.
Most browsers except IE11 support it (details by caniuse.com). The MDN docs also include a polyfill in case you have to target older browsers.
To find the closest tbody parent given a th you could do:
th.closest('tbody');
In case you want to write the function yourself - here is what I came up with:
function findClosestParent (startElement, fn) {
var parent = startElement.parentElement;
if (!parent) return undefined;
return fn(parent) ? parent : findClosestParent(parent, fn);
}
To find the closest parent by tag name you could use it like this:
findClosestParent(x, element => return element.tagName === "SECTION");
function closest(el, sel) {
if (el != null)
return el.matches(sel) ? el
: (el.querySelector(sel)
|| closest(el.parentNode, sel));
}
This solution uses some of the more recent features of the HTML 5 spec, and using this on older/incompatible browsers (read: Internet Explorer) will require a polyfill.
Get closest DOM element up the tree that contains a class, ID, data attribute, or tag. Includes the element itself. Supported back to IE6.
var getClosest = function (elem, selector) {
var firstChar = selector.charAt(0);
// Get closest match
for ( ; elem && elem !== document; elem = elem.parentNode ) {
// If selector is a class
if ( firstChar === '.' ) {
if ( elem.classList.contains( selector.substr(1) ) ) {
return elem;
}
}
// If selector is an ID
if ( firstChar === '#' ) {
if ( elem.id === selector.substr(1) ) {
return elem;
}
}
// If selector is a data attribute
if ( firstChar === '[' ) {
if ( elem.hasAttribute( selector.substr(1, selector.length - 2) ) ) {
return elem;
}
}
// If selector is a tag
if ( elem.tagName.toLowerCase() === selector ) {
return elem;
}
}
return false;
};
var elem = document.querySelector('#some-element');
var closest = getClosest(elem, '.some-class');
var closestLink = getClosest(elem, 'a');
var closestExcludingElement = getClosest(elem.parentNode, '.some-class');
Supported on all browsers except IE. UPDATE: Edge now support it as well.
No need for jQuery.
More over, replacing jQuery's $(this).closest('tbody') with $(this.closest('tbody')) will increase performance, significantly when the element is not found.
Polyfill for IE:
if (!Element.prototype.matches) Element.prototype.matches = Element.prototype.msMatchesSelector;
if (!Element.prototype.closest) Element.prototype.closest = function (selector) {
var el = this;
while (el) {
if (el.matches(selector)) {
return el;
}
el = el.parentElement;
}
};
Note that there's no return when the element was not found, effectively returning undefined when the closest element was not found.
A little late to the party, but as I was passing by and just answer back a very similar question, I drop here my solution - we can say it's the JQuery closest() approach, but in plain good ol' JavaScript.
This function takes a CSS selector string as an argument. it then returns the closest ancestor of the current element (or the element itself) which matches the CSS selector which was passed in the arguments. If there is no ancestor it will return null.
Example:
const child = document.querySelector('.child');
// select the child
console.dir(child.closest('.parent').className);
// check if there is any ancestor called parent