How can I refresh a stored and snapshotted jquery selector variable

Question

I ran yesterday in a problem with a jquery-selector I assigned to a variable and it's driving me mad. Here is a jsfiddle with testcase: - assign the .elem to my obj var - log both lengths to the console. Result => 4 - Remove #3 from the DOM - log obj to the console => the removed #3 is still there and the length is still 4. I figured out that jquery query is snapshotted? to the variable and can't?won't? be updated - log .elem to the console.. yep Result => 3 and the #3 is gone - Now I update .elem with a new width of 300 - logging obj & obj.width gives me 300.. So the snapshot has been updated ? What's interesting is that 3 of the 4 divs have the new width, but the removed #3 doesn't... Another test: Adding a li element to the domtree and logging obj and .elem. .elem does have the new li and obj doesn't, because it's still the old snapshot http://jsfiddle.net/CBDUK/1/ Is there no way to update this obj with the new content? I don't want to make a new obj, because in my application the…

Accepted Answer

Yeah, it's a snapshot. Furthermore, removing an element from the page DOM tree isn't magically going to vanish all references to the element.

You can refresh it like so:

```
var a = $(".elem");

a = $(a.selector);
```

Mini-plugin:

```
$.fn.refresh = function() {
    return $(this.selector);
};

var a = $(".elem");

a = a.refresh();
```

This simple solution doesn't work with complex traversals though. You are going to have to make a parser for the `.selector` property to refresh the snapshot for those.

The format is like:

```
$("body").find("div").next(".sibling").prevAll().siblings().selector
//"body div.next(.sibling).prevAll().siblings()"
```

In-place mini-plugin:

```
$.fn.refresh = function() {
    var elems = $(this.selector);
    this.splice(0, this.length);
    this.push.apply( this, elems );
    return this;
};

var a = $(".elem");
a.refresh() //No assignment necessary
```

How can I refresh a stored and snapshotted jquery selector variable

Solution

Problem