How can I get selector from jQuery object
$("*").click(function(){
$(this); // how can I get selector from $(this) ?
});
Is there an easy way to get selector from $(this)? There is a way to select an element by its selector, but what about getting the selector from element?
Answer
Ok, so in a comment above the question asker Fidilip said that what he/she's really after is to get the path to the current element.
Here's a script that will "climb" the DOM ancestor tree and then build fairly specific selector including any id or class attributes on the item clicked.
See it working on jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/Jkj2n/209/
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(function() {
$("*").on("click", function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
var selector = $(this)
.parents()
.map(function() { return this.tagName; })
.get()
.reverse()
.concat([this.nodeName])
.join(">");
var id = $(this).attr("id");
if (id) {
selector += "#"+ id;
}
var classNames = $(this).attr("class");
if (classNames) {
selector += "." + $.trim(classNames).replace(/\s/gi, ".");
}
alert(selector);
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1><span>I love</span> jQuery</h1>
<div>
<p>It's the <strong>BEST THING</strong> ever</p>
<button id="myButton">Button test</button>
</div>
<ul>
<li>Item one
<ul>
<li id="sub2" >Sub one</li>
<li id="sub2" class="subitem otherclass">Sub two</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
For example, if you were to click the 2nd list nested list item in the HTML below, you would get the following result:
HTML>BODY>UL>LI>UL>LI#sub2.subitem.otherclass