Use .get(0) or .html() to return HTML with jQuery

Question

So as far as I can tell, if I have

<div id="thing">OMG there's awesome stuff in here</div>

and need to plant that html somewhere else, I have the option of using:
$('#thing').html(); or $('#thing').get(0);

Is there a greater internet standard in using one or the other? They do the exact same thing, right?

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

They do the exact same thing, right?

Wrong. The html method returns the contents of the selected element, as a string. The get method returns the element itself, as an object. For example, we have this element:

<div id="example">
    <span>A child element</span>
</div>

The methods would return the following:

console.log($("#example").html()); //Prints "<span>A child element</span>"
console.log($("#example").get(0)); //Prints an object

You can try that for yourself here.

Answer 2

.get(0) will give you the first element in the jquery object, not the HTML within that. You would then need to get the html. If you're using jquery, use jquery. I see no reason not to use .html().