Question

Lets say I have a checkbox with id ‘test’ and its on a page loaded with jQuery 1.5.2.

<input id="test" type="checkbox"/>

Now if I click on the checkbox to set it in the checked state…

Why does $("#test").is(":checked") return true and $("#test").is("*[checked]") return false.

Here’s a jsFiddle with the described scenario

Answer 1

The [checked] is a selector that picks elements that are currently checked with the checked attribute not the property – in other words “if the element has the checked attribute, pick it up”.

If you want to check if the checkbox is checked or not, you must use :checked.

Example usage:

if($('#test').is(':checked'))
{
   return true;
}

With jQuery 1.6 and higher you can use the .prop() function for performance reasons.

if($('#test').prop('checked'))
{
   return true;
}