Question

I have been reading on best practices and I have come across this one:

Dont do this:

$("#element .child").hide()

Do this:

$("#element").find('.child').hide()

Now my question is what if i want to hide/show the .child element multiple times, should I declare it like this:

var spinner = $("#element").find('.child');
spinner.hide();

or do I just keep calling $("#element").find('.child').hide()

Answer 1

Should I declare it like this:

var spinner = $("#element").find('.child');
spinner.hide();

Yes. You should do exactly that since it will obviate the need for multiple dom queries.

One common best practice though, so you can easily keep track of which variables are jQuery objects and which are not, is to prefix your variable with $

var $spinner = $("#element").find('.child');
$spinner.hide();