Question

Is there a good way to .appendTo either one element or the either depending on if it exists in the DOM?

So for example ideally I would like to do

ideal method 1:

.appendTo($('#div1') || $('#div2'));

not so good method 2:

var div1 = $('#div1'),
    div2 = $('#div2'),
    e = div1;

if (!div1.length) e = div2;

.appendTo(e);

Of course I can’t do the first option because $() always returns an object so it will evaluate to true alert($ || 'a'); will always return the jQuery object.

Answer 1

If they’re in order just use .first(), like this:

.appendTo($("#div1, #div2").first());

Whichever order they occur in the DOM in, just use .first() or .last() to select from the direction you want. Also .appendTo() just gets swapped around, it’d be better to do this:

$("#div1, #div2").first().append(element);