Question

How do I use jQuery .each() on a string

// For Exmaple

var mystring = '<div> bleh content </div> <div> bleh content </div>';

$('div', mystring).each(function(e) {
  alert('do something');
});

// the above code isnt launching an alert for each div in the string? Im not sure why?

Answer 1

The way you’re doing it, you’re searching for div elements inside the elements passed in. Basically equivalent of doing a .find().

What you want is filter() which will filter over the top level elements in the collection you passed.

Test it here: http://jsfiddle.net/u5uDg/

var mystring = '<div> bleh content </div> <div> bleh content </div>';

$(mystring).filter('div').each(function(e) {
    alert('do something');
});

If you wanted to use your approach, you would need to give the div elements a parent on which jQuery can perform the find.

http://jsfiddle.net/u5uDg/1/

      // Added parent <div> element
var mystring = '<div><div> bleh content </div> <div> bleh content </div></div>';

$('div', mystring).each(function(e) {
  alert('do something');
});

---

As requested in your comment, you can delay execution of the code in the .each() using setTimeout() and arriving at the duration of each by multiplying the current iteration number by the number of milliseconds you want to delay.

http://jsfiddle.net/u5uDg/6/

var mystring = '<div> bleh content </div> <div> bleh content </div>';

   // Get the length
var length = $(mystring).filter('div').length;

$(mystring).filter('div').each(function(e) {
    // setTimeout is used to delay code from executing.
    // Here we multiply e (which is the index of the current 
    //   iteration) by 2000 milliseconds, so each iteration
    //   is delayed by an additional 2000ms
    (function(th) {
        setTimeout(function() {
                 alert($(th).text());
                 if(!--length) { alert('done'); } // alert if done
        }, e * 2000);
    }(this));
});​