Question

Why is my new element wrapped in an array?

$('<a>')
[<a>​</a>​]

When I try to use it with appendChild I get a dom exception 8 error.

Edit: That was an example. My exact code is

addendum = $("<a>", {href: download_url, text:"Download .nupkg file"})
badge = $(".nuget-badge")[0]
badge.appendChild(addendum)

Answer 1

All jQuery objects are array-like objects. Selecting the first element in the collection with [0] will return just the one element. If you instead log the jQuery object, it will appear to be an array in the console.

Note, jQuery has a built-in method called .append that should do what you want.

$('<a>').append('<span>Hello World!</span>');

or

$('<a>').append(someotherelement);

or for your given code:

$(".nuget-badge").append($("<a>", {href: download_url, text:"Download .nupkg file"}))

or (preferred)

$("<a>", {href: download_url, text:"Download .nupkg file"}).appendTo(".nuget-badge");