Can I combine a variable and a selector in Jquery?

Answer 1

You can use find()

Description: Get the descendants of each element in the current set of matched elements, filtered by a selector, jQuery object, or element.

$top.find(".middle");

Answer 2

Use

$('.middle', $top)

or

$top.find('.middle')

You could also have simply combined the selectors, which are strings, with

$($top.selector + ' .middle')

but this would only be slower and less readable...

Answer 3

Could you just select it like this:

$('.top .middle').click();