jQuery & jQuery UI Documentation

jQuery & jQuery UI

.replaceAll()

.replaceAll( target ) Returns: jQuery

Description: Replace each target element with the set of matched elements.

  • version added: 1.2.replaceAll( target )

    targetA selector expression indicating which element(s) to replace.

The .replaceAll() method is corollary to .replaceWith(), but with the source and target reversed. Consider this DOM structure:

<div class="container">
  <div class="inner first">Hello</div>
  <div class="inner second">And</div>
  <div class="inner third">Goodbye</div>
</div>

We can create an element, then replace other elements with it:

$('<h2>New heading</h2>').replaceAll('.inner');

This causes all of them to be replaced:

<div class="container">
  <h2>New heading</h2>
  <h2>New heading</h2>
  <h2>New heading</h2>
</div>

Or, we could select an element to use as the replacement:

$('.first').replaceAll('.third');

This results in the DOM structure:

<div class="container">
  <div class="inner second">And</div>
  <div class="inner first">Hello</div>
</div>

From this example, we can see that the selected element replaces the target by being moved from its old location, not by being cloned.

Example:

Replace all the paragraphs with bold words.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <p>Hello</p>
  <p>cruel</p>
  <p>World</p>
<script>$("<b>Paragraph. </b>").replaceAll("p"); // check replaceWith() examples</script>

</body>
</html>