jQuery | Traversing Descendants

Last Updated : 28 Mar, 2019

Using jQuery we can traverse down the DOM tree in search of descendants of an element.
A descendant is a child, grandchild, great-grandchild and so on.

Traversing Down the DOM Tree: jQuery methods for traversing down the DOM tree are.

children()
find()

jQuery children() Method
The children() method returns all direct children of selected element.
This method traverses only a single level down to DOM tree.
Example:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
  
<head> 
    <style> 
        .descendants * { 
            display: block; 
            border: 2px solid lightgrey; 
            color: lightgrey; 
            padding: 5px; 
            margin: 15px; 
        } 
    </style> 
    <script src= 
"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"> 
  </script> 
    <script> 
        $(document).ready(function() { 
            $("div").children().css({ 
                "color": "green", 
                "border": "2px solid blue" 
            }); 
        }); 
    </script> 
</head> 
  
<body> 
  
    <div class="descendants" 
         style="width:500px;"> 
      current element 
        <p>child 
            <span> 
              grandchild 
          </span> 
        </p> 
    </div> 
</body> 
  
</html> 

Output:

jQuery find() Method:
jQuery find() method returns descendant elements of the selected element and all the way down to last descendant.
Example-2:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
  
<head> 
    <style> 
        .descendants * { 
            display: block; 
            border: 2px solid lightgrey; 
            color: lightgrey; 
            padding: 5px; 
            margin: 15px; 
        } 
    </style> 
    <script src= 
"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"> 
  </script> 
    <script> 
        $(document).ready(function() { 
            $("div").find("span").css({ 
                "color": "green", 
                "border": "2px solid blue" 
            }); 
        }); 
    </script> 
</head> 
  
<body> 
  
    <div class="descendants" 
         style="width:500px;"> 
      current element 
        <p>child 
            <span>grandchild</span> 
        </p> 
    </div> 
  
</body> 
  
</html> 