get a total of jquery's .each()

Question

Hi,

I'm using jquery's .each() to iterate over a group of li's. I need a total of all the li's matched. Is the only way to create a count variable outside the .each() and increment this inside the .each()? It doesn't seem very elegant.

var count;
$('#accordion li').each(function() {
    ++count;
});  

Answer 1

$('#accordion li').length;

Answer 2

Two options:

$('#accordian li').size(); // the jQuery way
$('#accordian li').length; // the Javascript way, which jQuery calls anyhow....

Since jQuery calls length under the hood, it's faster to use that instead of the size() call.

Answer 3

Well, I just saw this question, and you already accepted an answer, but I'm going to leave one anyway.

The point of the question seems to be concerned with incrementing a counter.

The fact is that jQuery's .each() method takes care of this for you. The first parameter for .each() is an incrementing counter, so you don't need to do it yourself.

$('#accordian li').each(function(index) {
       // index has the count of the current iteration
    console.log( index );
});

So as you can see, there is an elegant solution built in for you.