Test if two elements are the same

Question

I would suspect this to work at first:

if ($('#element') == $('#element')) alert('hello');

But it does not. How does one test if elements are the same?

score 147 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '13 at 15:58

147

As of jquery 1.6 you can now simply do:

$element1.is($element2)

answered Oct 23 '13 at 15:58

chrisarton

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This is the best answer for all recent versions of Jquery. – Chris Jaynes Feb 14 '14 at 05:12
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Another one I wish I could upvote for each time I end up Googling the same question and finding this answer – freefaller Jun 14 '17 at 10:14

score 75 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 13 '09 at 03:59

75

This should work:

if ($(this)[0] === $(this)[0]) alert('hello');

so should this

if (openActivity[0] == $(this)[0]) alert('hello');

answered Aug 13 '09 at 03:59

epascarello

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shouldn't your second example be === and not ==, to properly mirror your first example? – Prusprus Jun 26 '13 at 15:08
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This answer might have been right in older versions of jquery, but most people are probably using a version that supports `$.is` – Chris Jaynes Feb 14 '14 at 05:11

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 09 '11 at 11:39

14

Or just

if (openActivity[0] == this) alert('hello');

(without a new jQuery instance ;-)

answered Mar 09 '11 at 11:39

Francesco Terenzani

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score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 08 '11 at 20:48

As somebody already told, the same HTML element wrapped in two different moments generates two different jQuery instances, so they can never be equal.

Instead, the HTML elements wrapped may be compared that way, since the memory location they occupy is the same if it is the same HTML element, so:

var LIs = $('#myUL LI');
var $match = $('#myUL').find('LI:first');

alert(LIs.eq(0) === $match); // false
alert(LIs.get(0) === $match.get(0)) // TRUE! yeah :)

Best regards!

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 13 '09 at 03:52

5

I would use addClass() for marking the opened and you can check that easily.

answered Aug 13 '09 at 03:52

Santi

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score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 22 '18 at 17:10

9 years later, without jQuery

If two elements are the same one, two elements must have the same pointer. Thus,

document.body === document.body // true
document.querySelector('div') === document.querySelector('div') // true
document.createElement('div') === document.createElement('div') // false

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 13 '09 at 03:53

Like silky or Santi said, a unique ID or class would be the easiest way to test. The reason your if statements don't work like you'd expect is because it's comparing 2 objects and seeing if they're the same object in memory.

Since it's always a new object getting created by $(this), they can never equal each other. That's why you have to test on a property of the object. You could get away with no unique id/class if each openActivity element was guaranteed to have different content that you could test against.

Test if two elements are the same

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