How to get the class of the clicked element?

Question

Here's a quick jQuery example that adds a click event to each "li" tag, and then retrieves the class attribute for the clicked element. Hope it helps.

$("li").click(function() {
   var myClass = $(this).attr("class");
   alert(myClass);
});

Equally, you don't have to wrap the object in jQuery:

$("li").click(function() {
   var myClass = this.className;
   alert(myClass);
});

And in newer browsers you can get the full list of class names:

$("li").click(function() {
   var myClasses = this.classList;
   alert(myClasses.length + " " + myClasses[0]);
});

You can emulate classList in older browsers using myClass.split(/\s+/);

$("li").click(function(){
    alert($(this).attr("class"));
});

I saw this question so I thought I might expand on it a little more. This is an expansion of the idea that @SteveFenton had. Instead of binding a click event to each li element, it would be more efficient to delegate the events from the ul down.

For jQuery 1.7 and higher

$("ul.tabs").on('click', 'li', function(e) {
   alert($(this).attr("class"));
});

Documentation: .on()

For jQuery 1.4.2 - 1.7

$("ul.tabs").delegate('li', 'click', function(e) {
   alert($(this).attr("class"));
});

Documentation: .delegate()

As a last resort for jQuery 1.3 - 1.4

$("ul.tabs").children('li').live('click', function(e) {
   alert($(this).attr("class"));
});

or

$("ul.tabs > li").live('click', function(e) {
   alert($(this).attr("class"));
});

Documentation: .live()

This should do the trick:

...
select: function(event, ui){ 
   ui.tab.attr('class');
} ,
...

For more info about the ui.tab see http://jqueryui.com/demos/tabs/#Events

All the solutions provided force you to know the element you will click beforehand. If you want to get the class from any element clicked you can use:

$(document).on('click', function(e) {
    clicked_id = e.target.id;
    clicked_class = $('#' + e.target.id).attr('class');
    // do stuff with ids and classes 
    })

$("div").click(function() {
  var txtClass = $(this).attr("class");
  console.log("Class Name : "+txtClass);
});