using jQuery to determine if children of a div have a css class

if (!$('*').hasClass("my-special-class")) {

All you need to do is use the selector itself to compare in an if statement

if($('.my-special-class').length > 0){
    //element with this class exists - do something
}

This will search the DOM for any element with the class my-special-class. If it cannot find that element, then the length is returned as 0

Alternatively you can modify your selector if you want to find it within a certain element -

if($('#myDiv .my-special-class').length > 0){
    //element exists in #myDiv - do something
}

This selector works the same way that any CSS selector works, any children of myDiv with the class my-special-class will be selected

use

$('#myID').find(".my-special-class").length

It will return 0, if there are no elements with that class inside that parent div.

if ( $('#yourIDorClass').children().length > 0 ) {
     // do something
}

This should work. The children() function returns a JQuery object that contains the children. So you just need to check the size and see if it has at least one child.

you have to use like this

$('#mydiv *').hasClass("my-special-class")

It will return true if the class is being used by any of the child elements of mydiv,false if not used.

$('#myDiv .my-special-class').length

Should do the job :-)

The reason that it is checking everything on your HTML page for that class is because you are using '*' in your jQuery selector.

If you want to target a specific div with jQuery just alter your code to look like:

if (!$('#myDiv').hasClass("my-special-class")) {
  ...
}