What does the get() function do in cheerio?

Question

What is the difference between

$("h1")

and

$("h1").get()

The first one returns some sort of object and the second one an array (with the same elements), but what exactly does it do?

The documentation only mentions "Retrieve the DOM elements matched by the Cheerio object. If an index is specified, retrieve one of the elements matched by the Cheerio object", but it still isn't very clear to me...

Answer 1

$("h1") results in a Cheerio object, on which Cheerio methods can be used (such as .get(), .text(), .prop(), and so on). Using .get() on a Cheerio object returns an array of underlying elements (not a Cheerio object), on which only methods that that element supports can be used - for example, instead of .text(), you would use .textContent, instead of .prop() you would use plain dot notation (eg instead of $('h1').prop('foo', 'bar'), $('h1').get()[0].foo = 'bar'). It's the same as jQuery's .get().

Cheerio objects are not DOM elements - .get() extracts an array of the latter from the former.