Question

Please explain the [0] in this code:

$(function (){      
    var $cont = $('#cont');     
    var $el = $cont.children(':first'), el = $el[0];    
}); 

I tried some ‘alert’ to find the text, but i don’t really understand why we precise the index, while we already know that we’re pointing on the “first” children of the div… ?

Answer 1

In the above example, $el is a jQuery object containing one element which is ensured by the :first selector. On the other hand, el contains the underlying DOM element of the first (and only) item in the $el jQuery object.

You can access native properties of the el variable, like .innerHTML. You can use all jQuery supported operations on $el, like $el.html().