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

Question

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 1

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'}); 

Answer 2

You may want to look into jQuery live events. You attach an event handler to a selector that either matches now or after additional elements are created in your DOM.

So if you have a <ul> and you dynamically create new <li> items, in your $(document).ready() you can wire up a selector to an event handler so that all of your <li> elements will be wired for that event.

Here's a jsFiddle sample that demos live.

Hope this helps.