Determine number of times the DOM was manipulated/appended

Question

Is there a way to count the amount of times that the DOM has been appended to?

Answer 1

If you're stricly after .append(), you can just patch it, like:

var _origAppend = $.fn.append;
$.appendCount = 0;

$.fn.append = function() {
    $.appendCount++;
    return _origAppend.apply(this, arguments);
};

Now, you could just access $.appendCount at anytime to see how often it was called. However, be aware that there are lots of functions which can manipulate the DOM. It might be a more clever idea, to patch jQuery.fn.domManip instead. That method is called internally basically at any dom manipulation (like you might have suspected because of the name)