Learning jQuery

Just like in CSS, it’s possible to use jQuery to select the children of an element and apply jQuery to them. This can be done using jQuery’s .children() method. The method works pretty much like any other jQuery method — to select all of the children of an element, use the parent element as the selector and apply the .children() method to it:

$(“.main”).children();

The example above simply selects all of the children of the .main class element(s). To apply jQuery to those elements, you’ll need to do some method chaining like in the example below:

$(“.main”).children().css(“color”, “#000”);

In the example above, we’re not only selection all the children of the .main class, but we’re also adding CSS rules to them (in this case, the rule is to make all of the text black).

The .children() method does accept a filter parameter, which you can use to select specific children of a certain element. To use this feature, you’ll need to pass the element type or the element’s class or ID through the parameters of the .children() method to be sure that only children of this element type, class, or ID are selected.

$(“.main”).children(a).css(“text-decoration”, “underline”);

The example above uses the filter parameter to only select the children of the .main element(s) that are also a elements, and then applies a CSS rule to those a elements.