How to select a single child element using jQuery?

Question

Using jQuery how do I select a single child element? I've looked at the Traversing API and know I can select all the immediate children img elements like this:

$(this).children('img');

And to select the first child img element I could use a subscript like this:

$(this).children('img')[0];

But I guess I'm kind of surprised I can't do this:

$(this).child('img'); // no subscript, returns single element

Or have I missed something?

score 131 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '09 at 20:57

131

I think what you want to do is this:

$(this).children('img').eq(0);

this will give you a jquery object containing the first img element, whereas

$(this).children('img')[0];

will give you the img element itself.

answered Sep 24 '09 at 20:57

Greg

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Note that using find as in the first answer will give you all descendant elements, whereas child will give you only direct children. – Greg Sep 24 '09 at 20:59
From [jquery.com](https://api.jquery.com/children/): `.children()` only travels a single level down the DOM tree while `.find()` can traverse down multiple levels to select descendant elements (grandchildren, etc.) as well. – Movahhedi Nov 16 '22 at 07:32

score 52 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 06 '13 at 18:08

52

No. Every jQuery function returns a jQuery object, and that is how it works. This is a crucial part of jQuery's magic.

If you want to access the underlying element, you have three options...

Do not use jQuery
Use [0] to reference it

Extend jQuery to do what you want...

$.fn.child = function(s) {
    return $(this).children(s)[0];
}

edited Aug 06 '13 at 18:08

Kevin Ji

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answered Sep 24 '09 at 21:02

Josh Stodola

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Ah ha! That was it. I was expecting the img element (trying to reference its 'src' property) instead of the jQuery object. Now I'll just use 'attr()' to get at the 'src' property. – Jonathon Watney Sep 24 '09 at 21:11
Thanks for 3) as well. I might consider doing that. :) – Jonathon Watney Sep 24 '09 at 21:12
8

No. If I use for example `find("div")[0]` I will not get `div` as a jQuery object. I will get `div` as HTMLElement. To get `div` as jQuery object one has to use `.eq(0)`, as Greg said below. – Green Jul 30 '13 at 03:27

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 04 '13 at 15:47

7

Maybe in this way?

$('img', this)[0]

edited Apr 04 '13 at 15:47

Nakilon

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answered Sep 24 '09 at 20:58

Anatoliy

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This will not necessarily select the direct child and, just as the accepted answer, this will return the element, not the jQuery object. – Septagram May 06 '15 at 09:16

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 20 '20 at 23:22

You can target the first child element with just using CSS selector with jQuery:

$(this).children('img:nth-child(1)');

If you want to target the second child element just change 1 to 2:

$(this).children('img:nth-child(2)');

and so on..

if you want to target more elements, you can use a for loop:

for (i = 1; i <= $(this).children().length; i++) {
    let childImg =  $(this).children("img:nth-child("+ i +")");
    // Do stuff...
}

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 02 '20 at 20:44

Not jQuery, as the question asks for, but natively (i.e., no libraries required) I think the better tool for the job is querySelector to get a single instance of a selector:

let el = document.querySelector('img');
console.log(el);

For all matching instances, use document.querySelectorAll(), or for those within another element you can chain as follows:

// Get some wrapper, with class="parentClassName"
let parentEl = document.querySelector('.parentClassName');
// Get all img tags within the parent element by parentEl variable
let childrenEls = parentEl.querySelectorAll('img');

Note the above is equivalent to:

let childrenEls = document.querySelector('.parentClassName').querySelectorAll('img');

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 23 '17 at 14:53

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$(function () { $('a').click(function() { $(this).parent().children('.dataContentSectionMessages').slideToggle(); }); }); this query will help to get the child item of a parent — Shashank Malviya, Aug 23 '17 at 14:53

How to select a single child element using jQuery?

6 Answers6