Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

JavaScript jQuery Basics Working with jQuery Collections The .each() method

Posted by Zimri Leijen
Zimri Leijen
11,835 Points

prepending a HTML string using JQuerys prepend method prepends a string instead.

In one of the challenges I am trying to prepend a checkbox to each list item in a list, however, using the following code, it prepends a string instead.

index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Document</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
    <h2>My Favorite Things</h2>

    <ul class="favorite-things">
        <li>Kittens</li>
        <li>Rainbows</li>
        <li>Unicorns</li>
        <li>Sprinkles</li>
    </ul>

    <script
    src="jquery-3.2.1.min.js"></script>
    <script src="app.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
app.js 
$('.favorite-things li').each(function() {
  this.prepend('<input type="checkbox"/>');
});

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,261 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,261 Points

Inside "each", a "this" represents an HTML Element and not a jQuery object. Both HTML Elements and jQuery objects have a "prepend" method, but they work differently.

If you want the jQuery method, you need to convert "this" to a jQuery object:

  $(this).prepend('<input type="checkbox"/>');
Zimri Leijen
Zimri Leijen
11,835 Points

Thank you, that makes sense.