Iterating Through N Level Children

Question

This seems like something neat that might be "built into" jQuery but I think it's still worth asking.

I have a problem where that can easily be solved by iterating through all the children of a element. I've recently discovered I need to account for the cases where I would need to do a level or two deeper than the "1 level" (just calling .children() once) I am currently doing.

jQuery.each(divToLookAt.children(), function(index, element)
    {
        //do stuff
    }
    );  

This is what I'm current doing. To go a second layer deep, I run another loop after doing stuff code for each element.

jQuery.each(divToLookAt.children(), function(index, element)
{
     //do stuff
    jQuery.each(jQuery(element).children(), function(indexLevelTwo, elementLevelTwo)
    {
        //do stuff
    }
    );  
}
);

If I want to go yet another level deep, I have to do this all over again.

This is clearly not good. I'd love to declare a "level" variable and then have it all take care of. Anyone have any ideas for a clean efficient jQueryish solution?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is an awesome question because of the levels deep catch. Check out the fiddle.

Converted this to a plugin.

Activate

$('#div').goDeep(3, function(deep){ // $.fn.goDeep(levels, callback)
    // do stuff on `this`
});

Plugin

$.fn.goDeep = function(levels, func){
    var iterateChildren = function(current, levelsDeep){
        func.call(current, levelsDeep);

        if(levelsDeep > 0)
            $.each(current.children(), function(index, element){
                iterateChildren($(element), levelsDeep-1);
            });
    };

    return this.each(function(){
        iterateChildren($(this), levels);
    });
};