How do you go backwards through a chain using Jquery?

Question

I thought there was something in jquery that allowed you go backward through a chain.

I want to do this:

var a = $(this).parent().addClass('test').goBackToParent().children('selectorHere').text()

I want to get the parent of the object that I have and add a class name to it. Once I do that I want to go through its children and find a child that matches my selector and get its text.

Can I do this, or do I have to do this instead:

$(this).parent().addClass('test');
var a = $(this).parent().children('selectorHere').text()

Edit

I am using "end" now but it does not work I made an example that you can try here

<table>
    <th>
        <tr>one</tr>
        <tr>two</tr>
    </th>
    <tr>
        <td id="test"><a href="#"><img src="http://ais.web.cern.ch/ais/apps/hrt/SMT%20v2/Images/btnbar_edit.png" /></a></td>
        <td class="selectMe">1</td>
    </tr>
</table>

$(function() {
    $('#test').click(function() {
        // does not work
        var a = $(this).parent().addClass('afb')
                   .end().children('.selectMe').text();

        // works
        var b = $(this).parent().children('.selectMe').text();

        alert(a + ' -should have value');
        alert(b + ' -works');

        return false;
    });
});

Answer 1

You're looking for the end() method:

var a = $(this).parent().addClass('test').end()
               .children('selectorHere').text();

The method:

Ends the most recent filtering operation in the current chain and returns the set of matched elements to its previous state.

Update: based on your html snippet, you actually don't need end at all! The important thing about jQuery, is that most non-traversal methods return a copy of themselves - so if you call $(this).addClass('test'), you get a copy of $(this) back.

So for your snippet:

// does not work
var a = $(this)                       // points at #test
           .parent()                  // now refers to the tr which holds test
               .addClass('afb')       // still refers to the tr
               .end()                 // now we're back to #test
           .children('.selectMe')     // empty! there are no direct children of #test which match .selectMe
               .text();               // empty

Instead, try it without the end:

// works
var a = $(this)                       // points at #test
           .parent()                  // now refers to the tr which holds test
               .addClass('afb')       // still refers to the tr
           .children('.selectMe')     // found the .selectMe td
               .text();               // returns '1'

Answer 2

You are looking for the method end(). Just use it in place of goBackToParent().

Most of jQuery's DOM traversal methods operate on a jQuery object instance and produce a new one, matching a different set of DOM elements. When this happens, it is as if the new set of elements is pushed onto a stack that is maintained inside the object. Each successive filtering method pushes a new element set onto the stack. If we need an older element set, we can use end() to pop the sets back off of the stack.