Selecting only first-level elements in jquery

How can I select the link elements of only the parent <ul> from a list like this?

<ul>
<li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link</a>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
  </ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link</a></li>

So in css ul li a, but not ul li ul li a

Thanks

Solution 1:

$("ul > li a")

But you would need to set a class on the root ul if you specifically want to target the outermost ul:

<ul class="rootlist">
...

Then it's:

$("ul.rootlist > li a")....

Another way of making sure you only have the root li elements:

$("ul > li a").not("ul li ul a")

It looks kludgy, but it should do the trick

Solution 2:

Once you have the initial ul, you can use the children() method, which will only consider the immediate children of the element. As @activa points out, one way to easily select the root element is to give it a class or an id. The following assumes you have a root ul with id root.

$('ul#root').children('li');

Solution 3:

As stated in other answers, the simplest method is to uniquely identify the root element (by ID or class name) and use the direct descendent selector.

$('ul.topMenu > li > a')

However, I came across this question in search of a solution which would work on unnamed elements at varying depths of the DOM.

This can be achieved by checking each element, and ensuring it does not have a parent in the list of matched elements. Here is my solution, wrapped in a jQuery selector 'topmost'.

jQuery.extend(jQuery.expr[':'], {
  topmost: function (e, index, match, array) {
    for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
      if (array[i] !== false && $(e).parents().index(array[i]) >= 0) {
        return false;
      }
    }
    return true;
  }
});

Utilizing this, the solution to the original post is:

$('ul:topmost > li > a')

// Or, more simply:
$('li:topmost > a')

Complete jsFiddle available here.

Solution 4:

Simply you can use this..

$("ul li a").click(function() {
  $(this).parent().find(">ul")...Something;
}

See example : https://codepen.io/gmkhussain/pen/XzjgRE