Cleanest way to get the next sibling in jQuery

Question

http://jsfiddle.net/mplungjan/H9Raz/

After quite some tests with next('a') and such, I finally found one that worked. I just wonder why next('a') did not, or closest or similar. Are there cleaner ways to get at the href of the link after the checkbox I click?

$('form input:checkbox').click(function () {  alert($(this).nextAll('a').attr("href")); });  

<form>   <div>     <input type="checkbox" name="checkThis" value="http://www.google.com" />Check here<br/>     <a href="http://www.google.com">click here</a><br>        <input type="checkbox" name="checkThis" value="http://www.bing.com" />Check here<br/>     <a href="http://www.bing.com">click here</a>          </div> </form> 

Answer 1

To elaborate on the comments above:

You cannot write:

• next("a"), because next() only tries to match the very next element. It will hit the <br> element and match nothing.

• closest("a") , because closest() walks up the ancestor chain, starting with the element itself, and therefore will miss the <a> elements.

You can write:

• next().next(), as Arend suggests. That's probably the fastest solution, but it makes the <br> elements mandatory.

• nextAll("a"), but that can return multiple elements (and will do so with your markup sample). Chaining into first() would prevent it, but nextAll() still would have to iterate over all the next siblings, which can make it slow depending on the complexity of the markup inside your <div> elements.

• nextUntil("a").last().next(), which only iterates over the next siblings until it finds a link, then returns the immediate next sibling of the last element matched. It might be faster than nextAll(), again, depending on your markup.