• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Programming Expert

Solving All of Your Programming Headaches

  • HTML
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • PHP
  • Python
  • SAS
  • Ruby
  • About
You are here: Home / jQuery / Using jQuery to Count Children of an Element

Using jQuery to Count Children of an Element

June 24, 2022 Leave a Comment

We can use jQuery to count the children of an element by making use of the jQuery children() method along with the JavaScript String length property.

var number_of_children = $("#div").children().length;

Let’s see this in action with a simple example.


Here we will have some HTML that will include an element with several child elements.

<div id="parent-div">
  <div class="child-div">
    <p id="title">Some text in the div.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="child-div">
    <p id="title">Some text in the div.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="child-div">
    <p id="title">Some text in the div.</p>
    <p id="title">Some text in the div.</p>
  </div>
  <p>Some more text</p>
</div>

As you can see in the code above, the div, #parent-div, should have 4 children, 3 div child elements and a paragraph child element.

We can use our code above to see if we get this answer.

var number_of_children = $("#parent-div").children().length;

console.log(number_of_children);

#Output
4

Let’s take a look at another example using a list.

<ul>
  <li>red</li>
  <li>yellow</li>
  <li>green</li>
  <li>purple</li>
  <li>red</li>
  <li>pink</li>
  <li>black</li>
  <li>orange</li>
</ul>

To see how many children are in our unordered list, we can use our code again.

var number_of_children = $("ul").children().length;

console.log(number_of_children);

#Output
8

Finally, let’s take a look at one final example using some code from the front page of this site.


  <div class="home-page-examples">
    <h2 class="home-examples-title">Become an Expert Programmer through Interactive Examples</h2>
    <div class="home-nav">
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-javascript home-nav-selected">JavaScript</div>
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-jquery">jQuery</div>
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-python">Python</div>
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-php">PHP</div>
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-html">HTML</div>
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-sas">SAS</div>
      <div class="home-nav-item home-nav-vba">VBA</div>
    </div>
    <div class="examples-container examples-javascript">
      <div class="featured-example-title">JavaScript – Featured Example</div>
    </div>
    <div class="examples-container examples-python">
      <div class="featured-example-title">Python – Featured Example</div>
    </div>
    <div class="examples-container examples-php">
      <div class="featured-example-title">PHP – Featured Example</div>
    </div>
    <div class="examples-container examples-jQuery">
      <div class="featured-example-title">jQuery – Featured Example</div>
    </div>
    <div class="examples-container examples-html">
      <div class="featured-example-title">HTML – Featured Example</div>
    </div>
    <div class="examples-container examples-sas">
      <div class="featured-example-title">SAS – Featured Example</div>
    </div>
  </div>

As you can see in this HTML example, we have many parent divs with children. Let’s use our code once again to see how many different children certain elements have.

Each variable name will be a div element in the example above.

var home_page_examples = $(".home-page-examples").children().length;
var home_nav = $(".home-nav").children().length;
var examples_container = $(".examples-container").children().length;
var examples_javascript = $(".examples-javascript").children().length;

console.log(home_page_examples);
console.log(home_nav);
console.log(examples_container);
console.log(examples_javascript);

#Output
8
7
6
1

Hopefully this article has been useful in helping you understand how to use jQuery to count the children of an element.

Other Articles You'll Also Like:

  • 1.  Using jQuery to Add Class to HTML Element
  • 2.  Using jQuery to Get the Top Position of Element
  • 3.  Sort List of Divs with Data Attribute with Radio Buttons Using Javascript
  • 4.  jQuery first() – Get the First Element
  • 5.  Get Padding of an Element Using jQuery
  • 6.  Get nth Child with jQuery
  • 7.  jQuery Compare Dates
  • 8.  Using jQuery to Add id to div
  • 9.  Using jQuery to Change the Id of a Div
  • 10.  Using jQuery to Get the Margin of an Element

About The Programming Expert

The Programming Expert is a compilation of a programmer’s findings in the world of software development, website creation, and automation of processes.

Programming allows us to create amazing applications which make our work more efficient, repeatable and accurate.

At the end of the day, we want to be able to just push a button and let the code do it’s magic.

You can read more about us on our about page.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About The Programming Expert

the programming expert main image

Welcome to The Programming Expert. We are a group of US-based programming professionals who have helped companies build, maintain, and improve everything from simple websites to large-scale projects.

We built The Programming Expert to help you solve your programming problems with useful coding methods and functions in various programming languages.

Search

Learn Coding from Experts on Udemy

Looking to boost your skills and learn how to become a programming expert?

Check out the links below to view Udemy courses for learning to program in the following languages:

Copyright © 2023 · The Programming Expert · About · Privacy Policy