JQuery append array value to each list item

Question

I have an unordered list like this:

<ul id="names-list">
 <li></li>
 <li></li>
 <li></li>
 <li></li>
</ul>

Lets say I want to add a name from this list to each of the <li> items:

var names = [ "Jon", "Nick", "Bill", "Tom" ];

And my code is like this:

$('#names-list li').each(function () {
 $(this).append(names);
});

But from some reason it doesn't work. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Answer 1

Why has no one pointed out that basing the number of li's on the number of empty li's in the dom is a horrible way to do it? It's much better to generate the li's based on how many items there are in the array.

Try this instead:

HTML

<div id="parent">
    <ul id="names-list">
        <!-- empty list -->
    </ul>
</div>

JS

var names = [ "Jon", "Nick", "Bill", "Tom" ];
var list = $("#names-list");
var parent = list.parent();

list.detach().empty().each(function(i){
    for (var x = 0; x < names.length; x++){
        $(this).append('<li>' + names[x] + '</li>');
        if (x == names.length - 1){
            $(this).appendTo(parent);
        }
    }
});

1. I define the names list, the list element, and the list elements parent
2. I detach the list from the dom so it doesn't refresh the dom for every list item added.
3. I empty the list in case there are already values in there
4. The each statement is more for triggering a function in relation to #names-list rather than handling multiple occurances of the list on the page
5. I run a loop going through each item in the array
6. I append a list item with each name in the array to the detached #names-list
7. On the final loop, I add the full list back into the dom by appending it to the parent element

Update: Pure JS, modern syntax version

If you are able to use modern code then this is a pure JS es6 version that I would use today:

const names = [ "Jon", "Nick", "Bill", "Tom" ];
const listElem = document.querySelector("#names-list");

// Creates a string of HTML to inject rather than appending DOM elements
const listItemsHtml = names.map(name => `<li>${name}</li>`).join('');

// Replaces the current content in the list with the new content
listElem.innerHTML = listItemsHtml