Question

I have two functions that generate DOM elements. They both attempt to create the same container element. (I’d prefer not to enforce a specific run order for these functions, or tightly couple them to the side-effect of creating this element). I’ve been trying to discover a method that would get an element if it exists, or create a single instance of it if it doesn’t, and return a jQuery object containing that element or all the matched elements if they already exist.

I haven’t found this to exist in searching through jQuery documentation, but I thought I’d ask here to see if anyone else has encountered a similar problem and has suggestions.

Answer 1

You can use this poorly written code:

var $element = $('#element').length ? $('#element') : $('<div id="element"></div>').appendTo('#containerToPutIt');

Or make it a bit cleaner:

var $element = $('#element');
if(!$element.length)
    $element = $('<div id="element"></div>').appendTo('#containerToPutIt');