Question

I create an element dynamically:

var $el = $('<div class="someclass"></div>');

I want to append the element ($el) somewhere, but it shouldn’t have an id.

How do I know if it has been appended before or not?

edit
I thought this should work

if($($el, "#target").length == 0)
    $("#target").append($el);

but that was wrong

Answer 1

You can simply check to see if it has a parent:

var $el = $('<div class="someclass"></div>');
//Code you wrote that may or may not attach it to the DOM

if($el.parent().length === 0) {
    //The element has not been added to the DOM because it doesn't not have a parentNode
}

However, if you have no idea what is actually being done with the element, you may have other problems with your code.