Question

I want to reload a particular div, which has an id corresponding to a table element’s id… (the div has only one table child).

the alert says tID is undefined.

javascript:

function (msg) {
         var tID = $("table", msg).attr('id');
         alert(tID);
         $("#reloadme_"+tID).html(msg);
}

html:

 <div id="reloadme_2036">

        <table id="2036"  class="customCSSclass">
            ...table contents...
        </table>

   </div>

Where have I gone wrong?

Answer 1

find looks for descendants of the current set of elements inside the jQuery object, you should use .filter which filters the elements in the jQuery object itself:

$('<table id="001">[...]</table>')
//the jQuery object will contain a reference to the parsed <table> element,
//so you have to .filter() the jQuery object itself to extract it

Of course, if it is the only element inside the jQuery object, there is no need for filtering. =]

Also, you’d use .find for e.g. looking for tr/tds (or any other element(s)) that are descendant of the table element referenced inside of your jQuery object.