Just for interest, you can also use a live collection for this (they are provided as part of the DOM). You can setup a collection of all divs in the page (this can be done in the head even before the body is loaded):
var allDivs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
Any div with an id is available as a named property of the collection, so you can do:
if (allDivs.someId) {
// div with someId exists
}
If the ID isn't a valid identifier, or it's held in a variable, use square bracket notation. Some play code:
<button onclick="
alert(!!allDivs.newDiv);
">Check for div</button>
<button onclick="
var div = document.createElement('div');
div.id = 'newDiv';
document.body.appendChild(div);
">Add div</button>
Click the Check for div button and you'll get false
. Add the div by clicking the Add div button and check again—you'll get true
.