More efficient way to do parent().parent().parent() etc. in jquery

Question

In this script I'm writing, I find myself using .parent() up to seven times in a row to get elements. While this works, it seems like there could/should be an easier way to do this/ function I'm unaware of. Any ideas other than more specific classes/ids on more elements?

Basically, my question boils down to accessing the div with id outer when I have a reference to the span with id 'innerSpan' in the html below:

<div id='outer'>     <a href="some_url">         <span id="inner">bla bla</span>     </a> </div> 

So currently, I would do something like this:

var outer = $('#inner').parent().parent()

and that gets crazy with deeply nested elements.

Another example:

Here my html:

<div id="options_right">             <table id="product_options_list" class="table table-bordered">              <tbody id="1">                 <tr>                     <td>                         <select name="option_1_val[0]" class="option_table_select">                             <option value="Red">Red</option>                             <option value="Blue">Blue</option>                             <option value="Green">Green</option>                             </select>                     </td>                     <td>                         <table class="table sub_options" id="0">                             <tbody>                             <tr>                                 <td>                                     <select name="option_1_sub[0][]" class="option_table_select  sub_option_select">                                         <option value="">None</option>                                         <option value="2">Size</option>                                     </select>                                     <div class="sub_option_value_holder">                                         <select name="option_1_sub_val[0][]" class="sub_option_values" style="display:none;"></select>                                     </div>                                 </td>                                 <td>                                     <a href="#" class="remove_sub_option btn btn-primary">Remove</a>                                 </td>                                 <td>                                     <a href="#" class="add_sub_option btn btn-primary">Add Another</a>                                 </td>                             </tr>                             </tbody>                         </table>                     </td> 

and my script. i wrote a function and need to pass it the ids of the main rows tbody as well as the secondary tables id so i can dynamically add more rows. You don't really need that function for this question but basically i get those ids like so:

get_suboption_row($(this).parent().parent().parent().parent().parent().parent().parent().attr('id'), $(this).parent().parent().parent().parent().attr('id')); 

thanks

jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/Hg4rf/

click the add another to trigger event

Answer 1

I think .closest() is what you're looking for :)

Answer 2

You have 2 nested tables,
to get what you want you can use this two DOM traversal methods .closest() or .parents()

• .closest() Self or ancestor. Self or travels up the DOM tree until it finds a match for the supplied selector
• .parents() Travels up the DOM tree to the document's root element, adding each ancestor element to a temporary collection; it then filters that collection based on a selector if one is supplied

Using nested tables:

$(this).closest('table').closest('tbody').attr('id'); 

$(this).parents('table').parents('tbody').attr('id'); 

jsFiddle demo