jQuery foreach: Using jQuery $.each

Note: This article may be out of date and was originally created on December 23rd 2013.

Learn how to loop through elements, arrays and objects with jQuery using the $.each() function, jQuery’s foreach equivalent.

jQuery’s foreach equivalent can be very useful for many situations. These examples will get you started and teach you how you can loop through arrays, objects and all kinds of HTML elements.

Loop through an Array with jQuery foreach

With most languages you are probably going to need to loop through an array at some point, this is where foreach often becomes very useful. Below is some example jQuery that will loop through an array and output each entry to the console.

The output of the above will be:

one
two
three
four
five

Loop through Objects with jQuery foreach

As well as arrays, you will often want to loop through objects, or arrays of objects, especially when working with JSON data. The following code is an example of looping through some JSON objects.

The output of the above would be:

ID: 1
First Name: Gandalf
Last Name: Greyhaem
ID: 2
First Name: Bilbo
Last Name: baggins
ID: 3
First Name: Frodo
Last Name: Baggins

Loop through a list with jQuery foreach

The ability to be able to loop through elements in a list can be very useful for all kinds of tasks. The code below will loop through every <li> element that has a parent with the .myList class.

Loop through other HTML elements with jQuery foreach

As-well as list elements there are benefits to being able to loop through all kinds of HTML elements. Below are a range of examples to demonstrate a few things that are possible.

So, there you have a load of examples that should get you started. There are many ways you can utilise the jQuery $.each method. If you know some more great examples, let me know via the comment box below.