Select all elements that are not a descendant of a specified element

Question

Using a jQuery selector, is it possible to select all elements that are not a descendant of the elements from another selector.

For example, I would like to select all the a tags that are not a descendant of a th tag. The only way I can see to do it right now is as follows:

$('a').filter(function () {
   return $(this).closest('th').size() == 0
})

Do you mean sibling or descendant? Your code suggests the latter — lonesomeday, Feb 05 '11 at 23:47
As @lonesomeday implies: **`a` elements *cannot be* siblings of a `th` element**. Could you post the html you're working with? — David Thomas, Feb 05 '11 at 23:52
It is not valid HTML to have an `a` tag being a sibling of a `th` tag — Petah, Feb 05 '11 at 23:53
@lonesomeday, @David Thomas, @Petah: I did mean descendant, not sibling. — tjwallace, Feb 06 '11 at 00:01

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 05 '11 at 23:54

7

Assuming you are looking for descendants (since having a a element as a sibling to th elements is not valid HTML) you can use the :not pseudo-selector to do this:

$('a:not(th a)');

This should be pretty fast in modern browsers using document.querySelectorAll, but might be slower than the original for older versions of IE.

See a simple demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/JR5sP/

answered Feb 05 '11 at 23:54

Yi Jiang

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Why I thought the `:not` selector wouldn't do this is beyond me but thanks for the answer. The demo was great as well. – tjwallace Feb 06 '11 at 00:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '11 at 00:02

Assuming that you do want to do as your question asks (regardless of the invalid HTML fact) and filter out elements with a specific sibling,

You can do this:

$('a').filter(function() {
    return $(this).siblings('b').length == 0;
}).css('color', 'orange');

HTML:

<div>
    <b>Hello there</b>
    <a>Don't select me!</a>
</div>

<div>
    <a>Select me!</a>
    <a>Select me too!</a>
</div>

See http://jsfiddle.net/JR5sP/1/

Select all elements that are not a descendant of a specified element

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