How to check if element with ID exists in AngularJS

javascript angularjs jqlite
Dimitris picture Dimitris · Jun 20, 2014 · Viewed 31.7k times · Source

How can I check if an element with a specific ID already exists in my DOM inside an Angular directive? By using angular.element() an element is created if one does not exist, for example angular.element('someID') will return an element whether one already exist or not.

What I am doing now as a workaround is using the .html() jqLite function like this:

if(angular.element('#someElementID').html()) {

console.log('only fires if element already exists');

}

Is there a better way to do this? I would like to avoid including the whole jQuery just for this.

Answer

DrDyne picture DrDyne · Jun 20, 2014

Both angular.element($document).find('#someElementID') and angular.element('#someElementID') return an empty array, in case several dom nodes matched the selector.

You should be pretty safe doing the following: 

if ( angular.element('#someElementID').length ) {
    console.log('#someElementID exists');
}

Also keep in mind that jQLite .find() method only supports tag names.

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