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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