get the next element with a specific class after a specific element

Question

I have a HTML markup like this:

<p>
  <label>Arrive</label>
  <input id="from-date1" class="from-date calender" type="text" />
</p>

<p>
  <label>Depart</label>
  <input id="to-date1" class="to-date calender" type="text" />
</p>

<p>
  <label>Arrive</label>
  <input id="from-date2" class="from-date calender" type="text" />
</p>

<p>
  <label>Depart</label>
  <input id="to-date2" class="to-date calender" type="text" />
</p>

I want to get the next element after from dates to get the corresponding to date. (Layout is a little more complex but from date has from-date class and to date has to-date class).

This is I am trying to do, I want to take a from date element and find the next element in the dom with to-date class. I tried this:

$('#from-date1').next('.to-date')

but it is giving me empty jQuery element. I think this is because next gives the next sibling matching the selector. How can I get the corresponding to-date?

Answer 1

Couldn't find a direct way of doing this, so wrote a little recursive algorithm for this.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/sHGDP/

nextInDOM() function takes 2 arguments namely the element to start looking from and the selector to match.

instead of

$('#from-date1').next('.to-date')

you can use:

nextInDOM('.to-date', $('#from-date1'))

Code

function nextInDOM(_selector, _subject) {
    var next = getNext(_subject);
    while(next.length != 0) {
        var found = searchFor(_selector, next);
        if(found != null) return found;
        next = getNext(next);
    }
    return null;
}
function getNext(_subject) {
    if(_subject.next().length > 0) return _subject.next();
    return getNext(_subject.parent());
}
function searchFor(_selector, _subject) {
    if(_subject.is(_selector)) return _subject;
    else {
        var found = null;
        _subject.children().each(function() {
            found = searchFor(_selector, $(this));
            if(found != null) return false;
        });
        return found;
    }
    return null; // will/should never get here
}