How can I call a function after an element has been created in jquery?

Dennis Martinez picture Dennis Martinez · Jun 17, 2011 · Viewed 93.9k times · Source

I want to call a function after an element has been created. Is there a way to do this?

Example:

$("#myElement").ready(function() {
    // call the function after the element has been loaded here
    console.log("I have been loaded!");
});

Answer

Thomas Clayson picture Thomas Clayson · Jun 17, 2011

How are you creating the element?

If you're creating it in the static HTML then just use .ready(handler) or .on("load", handler). If you're using AJAX though that's another kettle of fish.

If you're using jQuery's load() function then there's a callback you can run when the contents been loaded:

$('#element').load('sompage.html', function(){ /* callback */ });

If you're using jQuery's $.ajax or $.get/$.post functions then there's a success callback in that:

$.ajax({
  url: 'somepage.html',
  success: function(){
    //callback
  }
});

If you're just creating the element and appending it like this:

$('body').append('<div></div>');

Then you can do this instead:

$('<div />', { id: 'mydiv' }).appendTo('body').ready(function(){ /* callback */ });

But this won't matter - because it's synchronous (which means that the next line of code won't run until it's added the element to the DOM anyway... - unless you're loading images and such) so you can just do:

$('<div />', { id: 'mydiv' }).appendTo('body');
$('#mydiv').css({backgroundColor:'red'});

But acctually, saying THAT you could just do this:

$('<div />', {id:'mydiv'}).appendTo('body').css({backgroundColor:'red'});