jQuery traversing, which means "move through", are used to "find" (or select) HTML elements based on their relation to other elements. Start with one selection and move through that selection until you reach the elements you desire.
The image below illustrates a family tree. With jQuery traversing, you can easily move up (ancestors), down (descendants) and sideways (siblings) in the family tree, starting from the selected (current) element. This movement is called traversing - or moving through - the DOM.
Illustration explained:
An ancestor is a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, and so on. A descendant is a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so on. Siblings share the same parent. |
jQuery provides a variety of methods that allows us to traverse the DOM.
The largest category of traversal methods are tree-traversal.
The next chapters will show us how to travel up, down and sideways in the DOM tree.
For a complete overview of all jQuery Traversing methods, please go to our jQuery Traversing Reference.