Question

My HTML looks like and js looks like this:

<div class="container"></div>

var html = "<div class="error">hello</div>";

$(".container").append( $(html) );

Problem is that I don’t clear the html inside the div with class=container first, so I keep appending messages to that area.

How can I clear anything inside of the div class=”container” first and THEN append my ‘html’ div?

Answer 1

Assuming you mean to ‘replace’ what is in your div, I think what you need to use is:

$(".container").html( html );

A more jQueryish way to do it would be:

$errorDiv = $('<div>hello</div>').addClass('error');
$(".container").html($errorDiv.html());

That has the added benefit of giving you a reference to the error div.