What is the equivalent of .Max() in jquery

Question

I was wondering how can we write a jquery statement to get the max value of a property of matched elements.

in LINQ we say something like this:

var maxHeight = list.Max(a=> a.Height);

what is the best way to do this in jquery?

as an example let's say we want to select the max numeric value of all :text elements inside a container:

var allInputs = $("#container :text");
// how to get the max of parseInt(item.val())?

of course having a loop over all elements is an option but I'm curious to know if there is a magic to do with jquery.

Regards.

Answer 1

One of the possible solutions is to use map function and then Math.max to the result:

var values = $.map($("input:text"), function(el, index) { return parseInt($(el).val()); });
var max = Math.max.apply(null, values);

If it is needed it might be written in one line.

fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/WuVLr/1/

UPDATE:

Alternatively you can apply map in this way:

var values = $("input:text").map(function(index, el) { return parseInt($(el).val()); }).get();

Answer 2

Based on all the conversation here and my search in the net we can say that (at this time) there is no robust built-in jquery way to calculate .max() and .min() of a property of elements matching a selector.

From what Igor suggested I came up with the following two jquery functions which you can add to your project if you need to use .max() and .min() functionalities over and over:

$.fn.max = function(selector) { 
    return Math.max.apply(null, this.map(function(index, el) { return selector.apply(el); }).get() ); 
}

$.fn.min = function(selector) { 
    return Math.min.apply(null, this.map(function(index, el) { return selector.apply(el); }).get() );
}

// Usage:

var maxWidth = $("a").max(function() {return $(this).width(); });
var minWidth = $("a").min(function() {return $(this).width(); });

See a demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/NF7v7/3/