Determining whether jQuery has not found any element

css-selectors, jquery

Solution

`$('#idThatDoesnotexist').length` is what you're looking for. (If it finds nothing, this will `=== 0`.) So your conditional statement should probably be:

if($('#id').length) { /* code if found */ } else { /* code if not found */ }

You're getting an object returned from that alert because jQuery (almost) always returns the "jQuery object" when you use it, which is a wrapper for the elements jQuery's found that permits method chaining.

Problem

I'm using jQuery's selectors, especially id selector: ``` $("#elementId")... ``` How should I determine whether jQuery has found the element or not? Even If the element with the specified id doesn't exist the next statement give me: `[object Object]` ``` alert($("#idThatDoesnotexist")); ```

Original source