Question

I am trying to see if a particular string appears in a div. I have tried but it doesn’t return true or false which is what I thought contains did?

if($("#path"+i+"_status:contains('!=')")){

     alert($("#path"+i+"_status:contains('!=')"));

    //alerts - [object object]

     return true;

}

Here is my HTML:

<div class="status" id="path3_status">
<img height="21" align="absmiddle" src="images/valid.jpg">Text File (3000) = Source Table (3000)<img height="21" align="top" src="images/info.jpg" " id="img_path3">
<a onclick="clear_file('TI004OBAE', 'path3');" href="#">Clear</a>
</div>

What am I doing wrong. How can I find out if a div contains the string “!=”?

Thanks all for any help

Answer 1

Yes, contains is a jQuery selector. Selectors return jQuery object instances, which maintain an array of references to the matched DOM elements.

Check jQuery’s length property to see whether a selector matched at least one element:

if ($("#path"+i+"_status:contains('!=')").length > 0) {
    alert("found a match");
}