jQuery( expression, [context] )

This function accepts a string containing a CSS selector which is then used to match a set of elements.

The core functionality of jQuery centers around this function. Everything in jQuery is based upon this, or uses this in some way. The most basic use of this function is to pass in an expression (usually consisting of CSS), which then finds all matching elements.

By default, if no context is specified, $() looks for DOM elements within the context of the current HTML document. If you do specify a context, such as a DOM element or jQuery object, the expression will be matched against the contents of that context.

See Selectors for the allowed CSS syntax for expressions.

Arguments:

expression	String
An expression to search with.
context (Optional)	Element, jQuery
A DOM Element, Document or jQuery to use as context

Examples:

Demo
View Source

Finds all p elements that are children of a div element.

$("div > p").css("border", "1px solid gray");

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
                    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
  
  <script>
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $("div > p").css("border", "1px solid gray");
  });
  </script>
  
</head>
<body>
  <p>one</p> <div><p>two</p></div> <p>three</p>
</body>
</html>

Code

Finds all inputs of type radio within the first form in the document.

$("input:radio", document.forms[0]);

Code

Finds all div elements within an XML document from an AJAX response.

$("div", xml.responseXML);

Name	Type

[edit]

jQuery( html, [ownerDocument] )

Create DOM elements on-the-fly from the provided String of raw HTML.

Simple elements without attributes, e.g., "<div />", are created via document.createElement. All other cases are parsed by assigning the string to the .innerHTML property of a div element. The HTML string cannot contain elements that are invalid within a div, such as html, head, body, or title elements.

All HTML must be well-formed, otherwise it may not work correctly across all browsers. This includes the case where $("<span>") may not work but $("<span/>") will (note the XML-style closing slash).

Arguments:

html	String
A string of HTML to create on the fly. Note that this parses HTML, not XML.
ownerDocument (Optional)	document
A document in which the new elements will be created

Examples:

Code

Creates a div element (and all of its contents) dynamically, and appends it to the body element. Internally, an element is created and its innerHTML property set to the given markup. It is therefore both quite flexible and limited.

$("<div><p>Hello</p></div>").appendTo("body")

Name	Type

[edit]

jQuery( elements )

Wrap jQuery functionality around a single or an array of DOM Element(s).

This function accepts XML Documents and Window objects as valid arguments even though they are not DOM Elements. It will also accept another jQuery object, effectively returning $(other.get()).

Arguments:

elements	Element, Array<Element>
DOM element(s) to be encapsulated by a jQuery object.

Examples:

Code

Sets the background color of the page to black.

$(document.body).css( "background", "black" );

Code

Hides all the input elements within a form.

$(myForm.elements).hide()

Name	Type

[edit]

jQuery( callback )

A shorthand for $(document).ready().

Allows you to bind a function to be executed when the DOM document has finished loading. This function behaves just like $(document).ready(), in that it should be used to wrap other $() operations on your page that depend on the DOM being ready to be operated on. While this function is, technically, chainable - there really isn't much use for chaining against it.

You can have as many $(document).ready events on your page as you like.

See ready(Function) for details about the ready event.

Arguments:

callback	Function
The function to execute when the DOM is ready.

Examples:

Code

Executes the function when the DOM is ready to be used.

$(function(){
  // Document is ready
});

Code

Uses both the shortcut for $(document).ready() and the argument to write failsafe jQuery code using the $ alias, without relying on the global alias.

jQuery(function($) {
  // Your code using failsafe $ alias here...
});

Name	Type