Mini jquery plugin to update a stored jQuery object based on the original selector string. It will effectively replace all previous dom nodes with the ones matched when the update function is called;

jquery update plugin

(function ( $ ) {
  $.fn.update = function(){
    var newElements = $(this.selector),i;    
    for(i=0;i<newElements.length;i++){
      this[i] = newElements[i];
    }
    for(;i<this.length;i++){
      this[i] = undefined;
    }
    this.length = newElements.length;
    return this;
  };
})(jQuery);
 
// usage
var $foo = $("div.bar"); // selects current elements
(... many dom modifications ..)
$foo.update(); // updates with all new "div.bar" elements present in the dom, and removes those no longer present.

I normally store jQuery objects in variables to avoid having selector strings or references to strings all over the place, while also caching selectors. The issue is that after doing DOM modifications the jQuery object is an invalid representation and needs an update. This plugin fixes that.

I've migrated this to a normal git repository: https://github.com/fmsf/jQuery-obj-update