jquery - Filter element based on .data() key/value

Question

Say I have 4 div elements with class .navlink, which, when clicked, use .data() to set a key called 'selected', to a value of true:

$('.navlink')click(function() { $(this).data('selected', true); })

Every time a new .navlink is clicked, I would like to store the previously selected navlink for later manipulation. Is there a quick and easy way to select an element based on what was stored using .data()?

There don't seem to be any jQuery :filters that fit the bill, and I tried the following (within the same click event), but for some reason it doesn't work:

var $previous = $('.navlink').filter( 
    function() { $(this).data("selected") == true }
);

I know that there are other ways to accomplish this, but right now I'm mostly just curious if it can be done via .data().

Answer 1

your filter would work, but you need to return true on matching objects in the function passed to the filter for it to grab them.

var $previous = $('.navlink').filter(function() { 
  return $(this).data("selected") == true 
});