detecting span tag in my DOM

Question

I have seen lot of questions like this but none of them helped me I want to see when my span tag get available in DOM, my code looks like this

   <span id="inviteUpdate">0</span>

    if(jQuery("#inviteUpdate").html()>0){
        alert("Element exists");
    }

Am I missing something here?

if(jQuery('#inviteUpdate').length) { // Your span is in DOM } — Viktor Bahtev, Sep 21 '14 at 07:37
@ViktorBahtev That doesn't work, jQuery objects are always truthy, even if they're empty. — Barmar, Sep 21 '14 at 07:37
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3086068/how-do-i-check-whether-a-jquery-element-is-in-the-dom looking for this ? — Rahul Dess, Sep 21 '14 at 07:38
@hjpotter92 didn't worked , also I got this on console Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined — Badddy, Sep 21 '14 at 07:40
Do you need to know if the span has text or just if it exists in the DOM? — Russell Bevan, Sep 21 '14 at 07:41
@Badddy then `$('#inviteUpdate').length > 0` should do the trick — Russell Bevan, Sep 21 '14 at 07:49
@Badddy you sure something isn't preventing your jQuery from running? Working jsFiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/bevanr01/jh241Lmy/ — Russell Bevan, Sep 21 '14 at 07:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 21 '14 at 07:37

2

If you want to test whether an element exists in the DOM, use .length:

if ($("#inviteUpdate").length > 0) {
    alert ("Element exists");
}

This is because jQuery collections can be used as arrays, returning the original DOM elements that were matched.

answered Sep 21 '14 at 07:37

Barmar

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 21 '14 at 07:40

2

You can use getElementById method. If the value is not null, it exists.

var span1 = document.getElementById('inviteUpdate');
if(span1 != null)
{
    alert('span exists');
}

works well.

answered Sep 21 '14 at 07:40

mrsrizan

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 21 '14 at 07:37

1

  if(jQuery("#inviteUpdate").length >0){
        alert("Element exists");
    }

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<span id="inviteUpdate">0</span>

check this

answered Sep 21 '14 at 07:37

Man Programmer

The clause `jQuery("#inviteUpdate")` cannot be falsy. The first part of the condition serves no purpose. – Kijewski Sep 21 '14 at 07:40

3 Answers3