I could be misunderstanding what is happening but from what I can tell I am getting a DOM element and not a jQuery object when I use .each()
.
The below will not work as this
refers to a DOM element and not a jQuery object
$("span[id$='_TotalItemCost']").each(function() {
var someText = this.text();
});
Modified to transform this
to a jQuery object and all is well
$("span[id$='_TotalItemCost']").each(function() {
var someText = $(this).text();
});
Is there something funky with my selector? Is the jQuery .each()
documentation wrong and it's not a jQuery object but rather a DOM element returned by .each()
?
The documention is not wrong but you may misunderstand what a jQuery object is.
The jQuery object is returned by the $()
function. So $("span[id$='_TotalItemCost']")
is one jQuery object which contains every span element selected.
Using .each()
will iterate over the elements contained in the jQuery object. This is why this is a DOM node and not a jQuery object.
You did the right thing by using $(this)
to use the jQuery methods on this specific element.
@Vincent Robert, you pretty much summarized it perfectly, but let me just extend that a little.
even though JQuery is a function with prototypes extending its root instance, its acts more like an object.
if you seperate objects from methods/functions and look at them individually you will then understand how the jQuery interface is built.
si think of $()
as an object, and think of each()
as a method. you initialize an object using the jQuery $()
"selector", witch in turn returns an objects that contains only the elemetns / data you selected from the selector $()
.
this then has methods / functions that you can run directly on the selected content, but methods should not return a jquery object because most of the time there not returning nodes but mere strings or boolean's, so having them wrapped in a jQuery object would be pointless.
as your OP is based around the each function, your not meant to receive a jquery object there because each is not specifically designed for nodes and elements as such
for example, would you want a jquery object here?
$({a:'1',b:'2'}).each(function(){
});
this would be bad right, and pointless, that's why methods do/should not return objects, unless the method is meaning to return a singleton or is specifically designed for object returning.
also, when I say object, im not talking about json objects as such, but method / prototyping objects.
Hope this helps out.