Check if an element is empty after using .append

I want to check if a table body (tbody) is empty using jQuery. So far I've tried something like:

$("#searchTable tbody").is(":empty")

But it doesn't work. Any other ideas?

HTML Sample

<table id="searchTable" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>No.</th>
            <th><a href="#">Status</a></th>
            <th><a href="#" class="asc">Category</a></th开发者_如何学Python>
            <th><a href="#" class="desc">Title</a></th>
            <th><a href="#" class="desc">Last Used</a></th>
            <th><a href="#" class="desc">URL</a></th>
            <th style="width: 96px;">Actions</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody></tbody>
</table>

So I want to check if something was appended in tbody; if not, then alert something.

You could try something like

$('#searchTable tbody').children().length;

Which will be 0 if tbody is empty (has no children).

If the element is not found, it will return false too. Check is the element is present and is selectable using your selector.