Question

I’ve created an array of elements called $images (all the elements in the hidden class.) Then when I try to apply any method to just one element in the array, I get a $images[1].attr is not a function error. However, when I try $images.attr('id') for example without specifying the index of the array, it works but gives me the result for the first element in the array only.

$images = $(".hidden");
alert($images[1].attr('id'));

What’s going here and how can I apply methods to single elements in an array? By the way, I’m certain there are at least two elements in the array as I tested it for this.

Answer 1

If you want still to have a jQuery object, rather than retrieving a native DOM element object, you need to use the eq function. This gets an element at a position in the array and returns it wrapped in the jQuery object, so you can do jQuery operations on it.

So:

$images.eq(1).attr('id');

If you only want the DOM element, you can use the square bracket notation or the get method. You can then look up a DOM property directly:

$images[1].id;  // is the same as
$images.get(1).id;