jquery how to find if div with specific id exists

Question

I've got a function that appends a div to an element on click. The function gets the text of the clicked element and assigns it to a variable called 'name'. That variable is then used as the div id of the appended element. I need to see if a div id with 'name' already exists before I append the element but I don't know how to find this....here is my code:

  $("li.friend").live('click', function(){
      name = $(this).text();

      ///IF STATEMENT CHECKING FOR EXISTING DIV SHOULD GO HERE/////
         //IF DIV DOES NOT EXIST THEN APPEND ELEMENT///
          $("div#chatbar").append("<div class='labels'><div id='" + name + "' style='display:none;'></div>" + name + "</div>");

     //ELSE///
        alert('this record already exists');

UPDATE////

 if(document.getElementById(name)){
     $("div#" + name).css({bottom: '30px'});
  }else{
     $("div#page-content div#chatbar").append("<div class='labels'>" + name + "</div><div id='" + name + "'></div>");
  };

this seems pretty straightforward but I'm getting an error back "unexpected end of file while searching for class name" (I have no clue what that means).

Whats more is that I want to be able to delete this element if I close it out which should then remove the div id [name] from the document but .remove() does not do this....Here is the code for that:

$(".mini-close").live('click', function(){
   $(this).parent().remove();
});

I added .mini-close to the append function as a child of .labels so there was a way to close out of the appended div if needed. After clicking .mini-close and attempting to click the same name again from li.friends it still finds the div id [name] and returns the first part of my if statement...

Answer 1

You can use .length after the selector to see if it matched any elements, like this:

if($("#" + name).length == 0) {
  //it doesn't exist
}

The full version:

$("li.friend").live('click', function(){
  name = $(this).text();
  if($("#" + name).length == 0) {
    $("div#chatbar").append("<div class='labels'><div id='" + name + "' style='display:none;'></div>" + name + "</div>");
  } else {
    alert('this record already exists');
  }
});

Or, the non-jQuery version for this part (since it's an ID):

$("li.friend").live('click', function(){
  name = $(this).text();
  if(document.getElementById(name) == null) {
    $("div#chatbar").append("<div class='labels'><div id='" + name + "' style='display:none;'></div>" + name + "</div>");
  } else {
    alert('this record already exists');
  }
});

Answer 2

Nick's answer nails it. You could also use the return value of getElementById directly as your condition, rather than comparing it to null (either way works, but I personally find this style a little more readable):

if (document.getElementById(name)) {
  alert('this record already exists');
} else {
  // do stuff
}