Opposite of append in jQuery

I use .append to add to a div

开发者_Go百科$(this).append('<ul><li>test</li></ul>');

how can I search for a <ul> and remove it if it exists in the children of $(this)?

You could use remove(). More information on jQuery remove().

$(this).children("ul").remove();

Note that this will remove all ul elements that are children.

The opposite of .append() is .prepend().

From the jQuery documentation for prepend…

The .prepend() method inserts the specified content as the first child of each element in the jQuery collection (To insert it as the last child, use .append()).

I realize this doesn’t answer the OP’s specific case. But it does answer the question heading. :) And it’s the first hit on Google for “jquery opposite append”.

Use the remove() method:

$(this).children("ul").remove();

What you also should consider, is keeping a reference to the created element, then you can easily remove it specificly:

   var newUL = $('<ul><li>test</li></ul>');
   $(this).append(newUL);

   // Later ...

   newUL.remove();

just had the same problem and ive come across this - which actually does the trick for me:

// $("#the_div").contents().remove();
// or short: 
$("#the_div").empty();
$("#the_div").append("HTML goes in here...");

Opposite up is children(), but opposite in position is prepend().

Here a very good tutorial.