Instead of $.closest in Angularjs

I want to implement this code in directive but in jQLite this doesn't work How should this be done?

 var thisCell = element.closest('.sampleclass');

You have to implement this functionality manually, for example:

var thisCell = (function closest(e, className) {
  if (e[0].nodeName == "HTML") {
    return null;
  } else if (e.hasClass(className)) {
    return e;
  } else {
    return closest(e.parent(), className);
  }
})(element, "sampleclass");