Selecting the first "n" items with jQuery
JqueryJquery Problem Overview
With Jquery, I need to select just the first "n" items from the page, for example the first 20 links instead of selecting all of them with the usual
$("a")
Sounds simple but the jQuery manual has no evidence of something like this.
Jquery Solutions
Solution 1 - Jquery
You probably want to read up on slice. Your code will look something like this:
$("a").slice(0,20)
Solution 2 - Jquery
Use lt pseudo selector:
$("a:lt(n)")
This matches the elements before the nth one (the nth element excluded). Numbering starts from 0.
Solution 3 - Jquery
I found this note in the end of the lt() docs:
> Additional Notes:
>Because :lt() is a jQuery extension and not part of the CSS specification, queries using :lt() cannot take advantage of the performance boost provided by the native DOM querySelectorAll() method. For better performance in modern browsers, use $("your-pure-css-selector").slice(0, index) instead.
So use $("selector").slice(from, to) for better performances.
Solution 4 - Jquery
Try the :lt selector: http://docs.jquery.com/Selectors/lt#index
$('a:lt(20)');
Solution 5 - Jquery
.slice() isn't always better. In my case, with jQuery 1.7 in Chrome 36, .slice(0, 20) failed with error:
RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded
I found that :lt(20) worked without error in this case. I had probably tens of thousands of matching elements.
Solution 6 - Jquery
$("a:lt(n)")