How do I check if an HTML element is empty using jQuery?

I found this to be the only reliable way (since Chrome & FF consider whitespaces and linebreaks as elements):

if($.trim($("selector").html())=='')

White space and line breaks are the main issues with using :empty selector. Careful, in CSS the :empty pseudo class behaves the same way. I like this method:

if ($someElement.children().length == 0){
     someAction();
}

!elt.hasChildNodes()

Yes, I know, this is not jQuery, so you could use this:

!$(elt)[0].hasChildNodes()

Happy now?

jQuery.fn.doSomething = function() {
   //return something with 'this'
};

$('selector:empty').doSomething();

If by "empty", you mean with no HTML content,

if($('#element').html() == "") {
  //call function
}

In resume, there are many options to find out if an element is empty:

1- Using html:

if (!$.trim($('p#element').html())) {
    // paragraph with id="element" is empty, your code goes here
}

2- Using text:

if (!$.trim($('p#element').text())) {
    // paragraph with id="element" is empty, your code goes here
}

3- Using is(':empty'):

if ($('p#element').is(':empty')) {
    // paragraph with id="element" is empty, your code goes here
}

4- Using length

if (!$('p#element').length){
    // paragraph with id="element" is empty, your code goes here
}

In addiction if you are trying to find out if an input element is empty you can use val:

if (!$.trim($('input#element').val())) {
    // input with id="element" is empty, your code goes here
}

Empty as in contains no text?

if (!$('#element').text().length) {
    ...
}

Another option that should require less "work" for the browser than html() or children():

function isEmpty( el ){
  return !el.has('*').length;
}

Vanilla javascript solution:

if(document.querySelector('#element:empty')) {
  //element is empty
}

Keep in mind whitespaces will affect empty, but comments do not. For more info check MDN about empty pseudo-class.

You can try:

if($('selector').html().toString().replace(/ /g,'') == "") {
//code here
}

*Replace white spaces, just incase ;)

document.getElementById("id").innerHTML == "" || null

or

$("element").html() == "" || null

I have seen another contributor mentioned and I wanted to emphasize it. Best and the shortest solution for this is;

 if($('#element:empty')){ do something }

if($("#element").html() === "")
{

}

Are you looking for jQuery.isEmptyObject() ?

http://api.jquery.com/jquery.isemptyobject/

Here's a jQuery filter based on https://stackoverflow.com/a/6813294/698289

$.extend($.expr[':'], {
  trimmedEmpty: function(el) {
    return !$.trim($(el).html());
  }
});

JavaScript

var el= document.querySelector('body'); 
console.log(el);
console.log('Empty : '+ isEmptyTag(el));
console.log('Having Children : '+ hasChildren(el));


function isEmptyTag(tag) { 
    return (tag.innerHTML.trim() === '') ? true : false ;
}
function hasChildren(tag) {
    //return (tag.childElementCount !== 0) ? true : false ; // Not For IE
    //return (tag.childNodes.length !== 0) ? true : false ; // Including Comments
    return (tag.children.length !== 0) ? true : false ; // Only Elements
}

try using any of this!

document.getElementsByTagName('div')[0];
document.getElementsByClassName('topbar')[0];

document.querySelectorAll('div')[0];
document.querySelector('div'); // gets the first element.
​

Line breaks are considered as content to elements in FF.

<div>
</div>
<div></div>

Ex:

$("div:empty").text("Empty").css('background', '#ff0000');

In IE both divs are considered empty, in FF an Chrome only the last one is empty.

You can use the solution provided by @qwertymk

if(!/[\S]/.test($('#element').html())) { // for one element
    alert('empty');
}

or

$('.elements').each(function(){  // for many elements
    if(!/[\S]/.test($(this).html())) { 
        // is empty
    }
})

Try this:

if (!$('#el').html()) {
    ...
}