Check if an element is empty after using .append

Question

I want to check if a table body (tbody) is empty using jQuery. So far I've tried something like:

$("#searchTable tbody").is(":empty")

But it doesn't work. Any other ideas?

HTML Sample

<table id="searchTable"cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" >
<thead><tr>
<th>No.</th>
<th><a href="#">Status</a></th>
<th><a href="#" class="asc">Category</a></th>
<th><a href="#" class="desc">Title</a></th>
<th><a href="#" class="desc">Last Used</a></th>
<th><a href="#" class="desc">URL</a></th>
<th style="width: 96px;">Actions</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
</tbody>
</table>

So i want to check if something was appended in tbody...if not then alert something.

Answer 1

If the element is not found, it will return false too. Check is the element is present and is selectable using your selector.

Answer 2

You could try something like

$('#searchTable tbody').children().length;

Which will be 0 if tbody is empty (has no children).