jQuery next() didn't work in my case

Question

I want to traverse from start to target

<a class="start">
   <span></span>
</a>
<div class='target'></div>

and I use this line

$(this).next('.target')

$(this) refers to span. am I traverse correctly?

Answer 1

If this is the span, it has no siblings, so next will not work. To get to the .target div, you need to go up a level in the DOM, then use next. Try this;

$(this).parent().next(); // = the `.target` div

Alternatively you can use closest() with a selector:

$(this).closest('a').next();