Question

Suppose I get a list of items like $(".box"). Is it possible to get an indexed jQuery object

like

var $boxes = $(".box"),
    $box2 = $boxes[1]

currently I do something like

var $boxes = $(".box");
$boxes.each(function(i, box) {
    var $box = $(box); // <-- is this a good idea?
    // do something with $box
});

I wonder tho if the line var $box = $(box) is such a good idea? I am actually running that in a setInterval()

like

var $boxes = $(".box");
setInterval(function() {
    $boxes.each(function(i, box) {
        var $box = $(box); // <-- is this a good idea?
        // do something with $box
    });
}, 1000);

I wonder if its bad for performance since I am initializing a variable for each item in $boxes per 1s in this example. If I can access the element directly from the jQuery “array” or whatever $boxes is, it maybe better?

Answer 1

You can iterate though the jQuery elements as per your example, nothing wrong with that. Creating a local variable for each element var $box = $(box); is a good idea.

You can also access the elements of the jQuery object with the eq method, e.g:

var $boxes = $(".box"),
$box2 = $boxes.eq(1);

That way you don’t need to pass the element through the $ constructor.