I am having a problem with matching elements in jQuery. Basically I have list items, and onclick I want to pare two elements to find out its position within the list, ie.

<ul id="someID">
    <li>something</li>
    <li>something</li>
    <li>something</li>
</ul>

// here is the script
var row = 0,
    element = $('#someID > li:eq(1)').get(0);

$('#someID > li').each(function(index, value) {
    if (value == element) {
        row = index;
        return false;
    }
}

element is in the proper scope and this all should work (or so I think). The only reason I can see that it might not work is that the browser sees each list-item as the same, because its innerHTML is the same and has no id or class.

Is there some other way that I can get the position of a list-item within a list?

I am having a problem with matching elements in jQuery. Basically I have list items, and onclick I want to pare two elements to find out its position within the list, ie.

<ul id="someID">
    <li>something</li>
    <li>something</li>
    <li>something</li>
</ul>

// here is the script
var row = 0,
    element = $('#someID > li:eq(1)').get(0);

$('#someID > li').each(function(index, value) {
    if (value == element) {
        row = index;
        return false;
    }
}

element is in the proper scope and this all should work (or so I think). The only reason I can see that it might not work is that the browser sees each list-item as the same, because its innerHTML is the same and has no id or class.

Is there some other way that I can get the position of a list-item within a list?

• javascript
• jquery
• html

• 1 Your code works for me as long as you add the closing parenthesis that you're missing. Try it: jsfiddle/83hcP – user113716 Commented Aug 17, 2010 at 20:54
• Well its a good thing I found out about index(), that nice. But it turns out that that wasn't actually my problem, it was the #someID. This was my code simplified, and I was not getting the correct element to loop through. – Tom Commented Aug 17, 2010 at 20:59

4 Answers 4

var index = $('#someID > li').index( element );

index

To pare elements try:

value === element

== is coersive parison.

=== is explicit parison.

To get position of an element with jQuery, read awnsers from the other people ;)

For the record, now there is the "is()" function:

element.is(value)

If for some reason $.index() does not work for you...

Any reason you can't add an attribute or class to the object then loop through the list of items to find it?

$('li').click(function() 
{
  $(this).addClass('Selected');
  .. loop through element to find index
     .HasClass('Selected');      

  $(this).removeClass('Selected');
})