Question

I was implementing a jqueryui modal dialog box and a related blog showed a way of implementing it that worked but I don’t understand what $("<div></div>") is actually doing. Is this creating a blank div element to use? Is this a safe way of implementing this?

Answer 1

It’s equivalent to document.createElement('DIV').

You can look at the jQuery source. Look for the comment:

// Handle HTML strings

And you’ll see how it works.

The <div> created is empty, has no attributes, and is not attached to the DOM.

It’s more common to see it written as:

$('<div />')

…but not functionally different.

Often it’s chained with a method like appendTo(), to insert it into the DOM.