JQuery: Checking if Element Exists in DOM

Easiest and quickest way to check if an element exists in the DOM before attempting to manipulate it is to simply check the length attribute of the find method.

$(‘SomeElement’).length == 0; // if 0 element does not exist

In order to make it a chainable check you can simply add a wrapper method to your JQuery include file.

jQuery.fn.IfExists = function() { if(this.length > 0) return this; };

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Tim Clark

Experienced Business Owner, Chief Information Officer, Vice President, Chief Software Architect, Application Architect, Project Manager, Software Developer, Senior Web Developer, Graphic Designer & 3D Modeler, University Instructor, University Program Chair, Academic Director. Specialties: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, JQuery, AJAX, Node.js, React.js, Angular.js, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQL Server, Responsive Design, HTML5, XHTML, CSS3, C#, ASP.net, Project Management, System Design/Architecture, Web Design, Web Development, Adobe CS6 (Photoshop, Illustrator)

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