Use jQuery to recursively get the first parent of an element matched by a class filter

Question

I have a situation in which i need a reference to the very next DIV that is the parent of my current DIV, but matches a specific class name.

<div class="container">
    <div class="something">test</div>
    <div class="something">test</div>
    <div class="something" onclick="$(use jquery to find parent with class container)">test</div>
</div>

This would be pretty easy, but it can also look like this:

<div class="container">
    <div class="someotherthing">
        <div class="something">test</div>
        <div class="something">test</div>
        <div class="something" onclick="$(use jquery to find parent with class container)">test</div>
    </div>
</div>

Which means that i am looking for a solution that recursively walks UP the dom until it finds a parent of a given element that matches a certain CSS class.

And i was wondering whether jQuery can do this in a one-shot call.

Answer 1

The .closest() method should handle this:

 $(this).closest(".someclass")

Answer 2

Take a look at jQuery closest method which get the first element that matches the selector, beginning at the current element and progressing up through the DOM tree.