How can I detect if a selector returns null?

Question

What is the best way to detect if a jQuery-selector returns an empty object. If you do:

alert($(\'#notAnElement\'));

you get [object Object

Answer 1

You may want to do this all the time by default. I've been struggling to wrap the jquery function or jquery.fn.init method to do this without error, but you can make a simple change to the jquery source to do this. Included are some surrounding lines you can search for. I recommend searching jquery source for The jQuery object is actually just the init constructor 'enhanced'

var
  version = "3.3.1",

  // Define a local copy of jQuery
  jQuery = function( selector, context ) {

    // The jQuery object is actually just the init constructor 'enhanced'
    // Need init if jQuery is called (just allow error to be thrown if not included)
    var result = new jQuery.fn.init( selector, context );
    if ( result.length === 0 ) {
      if (window.console && console.warn && context !== 'failsafe') {
        if (selector != null) {
          console.warn(
            new Error('$(\''+selector+'\') selected nothing. Do $(sel, "failsafe") to silence warning. Context:'+context)
          );
        }
      }
    }
    return result;
  },

  // Support: Android <=4.0 only
  // Make sure we trim BOM and NBSP
  rtrim = /^[\s\uFEFF\xA0]+|[\s\uFEFF\xA0]+$/g;

jQuery.fn = jQuery.prototype = {

Last but not least, you can get the uncompressed jquery source code here: http://code.jquery.com/