jQuery & jQuery UI Documentation

jQuery & jQuery UI

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:input Selector

input selector

version added: 1.0jQuery(':input')

Description: Selects all input, textarea, select and button elements.

The :input selector basically selects all form controls.

Additional Notes:

Because :input is a jQuery extension and not part of the CSS specification, queries using :input cannot take advantage of the performance boost provided by the native DOM querySelectorAll() method. To achieve the best performance when using :input to select elements, first select the elements using a pure CSS selector, then use .filter(":input").

Example:

Finds all input elements.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <style>
  textarea { height:25px; }
  </style>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <form>
    <input type="button" value="Input Button"/>
    <input type="checkbox" />

    <input type="file" />
    <input type="hidden" />
    <input type="image" />

    <input type="password" />
    <input type="radio" />
    <input type="reset" />

    <input type="submit" />
    <input type="text" />
    <select><option>Option</option></select>

    <textarea></textarea>
    <button>Button</button>
  </form>
  <div id="messages">
  </div>
<script>

    var allInputs = $(":input");
    var formChildren = $("form > *");
    $("#messages").text("Found " + allInputs.length + " inputs and the form has " +
                             formChildren.length + " children.");
            
    // so it won't submit
    $("form").submit(function () { return false; }); 

</script>

</body>
</html>

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