Can I use $(this img).attr("alt") instead of $(this).children("img").attr("alt") ?

Hi Jody,

I agree with Ryan that it probably isn't possible. If that was possible it would be more equivalent to use the direct child combinator instead of a descendant selector since .children() only searches 1 level deep. i.e. $(this > img).attr("alt")

The jQuery constructor can take an optional 2nd argument which is the selector context. So instead of searching the entire document it would only search within the given context.

Your example could then be written like this:

$('img', this).attr("alt")

This is probably the closest you can get to what you tried to do. It's saying, "select all img elements within whatever element 'this' is referring to". this is the context to search within.

Again, to be closer to the project code, the direct child combinator should be used.

$('> img', this).attr("alt")

Selector context is implemented internally using .find() which is similar to .children() except it searches for all descendants. So even if you try to avoid using .children() or .find() in situations like this you'll still be using it behind the scenes.

To summarize:

// This
$('img', this).attr("alt")
// is implemented as
$(this).find('img').attr("alt")

// and this
$('> img', this).attr("alt")
// is implemented as
$(this).find('> img').attr("alt")
// which should be the same as
$(this).children('img').attr("alt")