temporarily removing and later reinserting a DOM element?

Question

Is there some jquery magic that will let me do the following:

[0- define some element in HTML (eg, a unchecked checkbox)]

1- update its DOM element by s

Answer 1

Just remove the element from the document and keep a reference to it. There's no need to clone it.

var el;

function removeEl() {
    el = $("#myElement")[0]; // Get the element itself
    el.parentNode.removeChild(el);
}

function reinsertEl(node) {
    node.appendChild(el);
}

As an aside since you mentioned it in your example, it's much simpler, clearer and faster to set the checked property of a checkbox directly rather than use attr(). There's no need to involve attributes at all and indeed jQuery's attr() usually doesn't. Just do $("#myElement")[0].checked = true;. It works in all mainstream browsers.