How to check if an element exist into another element?

Question

I'd like, to jQuery, understand if an element exist into another element.

Somethings like :

if($('#container').find('.search_element'))

must return YES if .search_element is into #container, NO otherwise.

How can I do it? Tried with $.contains('#container', '.search_element') but seems that this function doesnt works...

Answer 1

A simple length check:

if($("#container").find(".search_element").length) {
    // If the length is greater than 0, it exists
} else {
    // else, false
}