How to capture child links clicked using jquery?

I am trying to capture the event when a child element link is clicked and add class called "highlightchild" to it. Also I want to check if there are any child element link exist or not, if no child element exits ie "third level" highlight with "highlightparent" the parent. How can I do that using jquery?

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('.menu ul').hide();
  $('.menu .arrowUp').click(function() {
  $('.menu ul').hide();
  $(this).find(".third-level").toggle();
  });
});

html

<ul class="menu">
<li class="arrowUp"><a href="#">link1</a>
 <ul class="third-level" >             
 <!-- third level non-active -->
  <li class="arrowUp"><a href="/somelink/">Some Link</a></li>
 </ul>
</li>
<li class="arrowUp"><a href="#">link2</a>
 <ul class="third-level" >             
 <!-- third level non-active -->
  <li class="arrowUp"><a href="/links2/">some Links 2</a></li>
 </ul>
 </li>
<li class="arrowUp"><a href="#">link3</a>
 <ul class="third-level" >
 <!-- third level non-active -->
     <li class="arrowUp"><a href="/Agri/">Agricultural</a></li>
     <!-- third level non-active -->
      <li class="arrowUp"><a href="/sugar/">Sugar</a></li>
    <!-- third level non-active -->
      <li class="arrowUp"><a href="/bbc/">Coffee</a></li>
      <!-- third level n开发者_JAVA百科on-active -->
      <li class="arrowUp"><a href="/cnn/">Energy</a></li>
      <!-- third level non-active -->
      <li class="arrowUp"><a href="funstuff">Fun stuff</a></li>
   </ul>
</li>
<li class="arrowUp"><a href="#">link4</a></li>
<li class="arrowUp"><a href="#">link5</a></li>
<li class="arrowUp"><a href="#">link6</a></li>
</ul>

Not sure what you meant with your second part (could rephrase it and/or clarify?), but I would use .delegate():

$('ul.menu').delegate('a', 'click', function() {
    $('ul.menu .highlightchild').removeClass('.highlightchild');
    $(this).addClass('.highlightchild');
});

This adds only one event handler to the root of the menu.

// add hightlightChild class to children anchor tags on click
$('.parent_link > a').click(function(){
  $(this).addClass('highlightChild');
  return false; // or not if you want to follow the link
});

// loop over each parent link and highlight it if no children links exist
$('.parent_link').each(function(){
  if ( $(this).children('a').size() > 0 ){
    $(this).addClass('highlightParent');
  }
});

How about:

$(".arrowUp > a").bind("click", function(event) {
    event.preventDefault();
    if ($(this).closest(".third-level").length > 0 ||
        $(this).siblings().length === 0) {
        $(this).addClass("highlight");
    }
});

All links with a parent with class third-level, or links with no sibling as.

http://jsfiddle.net/andrewwhitaker/bMupR/

Edit: Didn't notice you wanted different parent/child highlight classes, here's how you would do that:

$(".arrowUp > a").bind("click", function(event) {
    event.preventDefault();
    if ($(this).closest(".third-level").length > 0) {
        $(this).addClass("childhighlight");
    }
    else if ($(this).siblings().length === 0) {
        $(this).addClass("parenthighlight");
    }
});

http://jsfiddle.net/andrewwhitaker/bMupR/1/