jQuery & jQuery UI Documentation

jQuery & jQuery UI

:empty Selector

empty selector

version added: 1.0jQuery(':empty')

Description: Select all elements that have no children (including text nodes).

This is the inverse of :parent.

One important thing to note with :empty (and :parent) is that child elements include text nodes.

The W3C recommends that the <p> element have at least one child node, even if that child is merely text (see http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-P). Some other elements, on the other hand, are empty (i.e. have no children) by definition: <input>, <img>, <br>, and <hr>, for example.

Example:

Finds all elements that are empty - they don't have child elements or text.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <style>

  td { text-align:center; }
  </style>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <table border="1">
    <tr><td>TD #0</td><td></td></tr>
    <tr><td>TD #2</td><td></td></tr>

    <tr><td></td><td>TD#5</td></tr>
  </table>
<script>$("td:empty").text("Was empty!").css('background', 'rgb(255,220,200)');</script>

</body>
</html>