jQuery: How to get the closest value when a button is clicked?

Question

I can't seem to get this code to work. How do I get the closest value of .abc when the button is clicked?

Defining Closest

ie: if you click the button where "A:" is at I want a value of 10. if you click the button listed in "B:" I want the value of 20.

Here is the code:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function(){

 $('.test').click(function(){
  var value = $(this)
     .parent()
     .parent()
     .closest(".abc")
     .attr("value")
  alert(value);
  return false
 });

});
</script>
<form name="myform">
<table>
 <tr>
     <td>A:</td>
        <td><input type="text" class="abc" name="a" id="a" value="10" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="vbn" id="vbn" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="mkl" id="mkl" /></td>
        <td><input type="button" class="test" name="test" id="test" value="test" /></td>
        <td>B:</td>
        <td><input type="text" class="abc" name="b" id="b" value="20" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="ews" id="ews" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="hrs" id="hrs" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="ew3" id="ew3" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="3ws" id="3ws" /></td>
        <td><input type="button" class="test" name="test" id="test" value="test" /></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>C:</td>
        <td><input type="text" class="abc" name="c" id="c" value="30" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="oiu" id="oiu" /></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="dfe" id="dfe" /></td>
        <td><input type="button" class="test" name="test" id="test" value="test" /></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>D:</td>
        <td><input type="text" class="abc" name="d" id="d" value="40" /></td>
        <td><input type="button" class="test" name="test" id="test" value="test" /></td>
    </tr>
</table>
</form>

Answer 1

A little while ago, I wrote a plugin which might help in this situation: It's called nextALL.

• Blog post about it
• Repostiory Plugin Page
• Demo page

You'd use it like this:

$(":button").click(function() {
    $(this).prevALL("td:has(.abc)").eq(0).find(".abc").val();
});

Answer 2

$('input.test').click(function() {

    $(this).parent()
           .prevAll('td:has(input.abc)')
           .find('input.abc:last')
           .val();

});

Here's a Working Demo

Answer 3

Disregarding the fact that your html code is improperly formatted with multiple elements having the same ID, this javascript code doesn't do what you think it does. Referring to http://docs.jquery.com/Traversing/closest, closest() looks up the tree from where you are. There is no element matching .abc in the tree directly above any of your buttons. What you're looking for is a neighbor and not a parent.

I would try something like this:

$(".test").click(function() {
  $(this).parent().parent().find(".abc").val();
});

but it does not solve your issue where multiple .abc near a specific button.

Why not just write the code "correctly" and have a button directly refer to a field using IDs and multiple classes?