unable to break out of jquery each loop

Question

I have a nested loop written in jquery and return false inside my child loop keeps appending the same text to the parent row. My code,

$('#listingProducts ul.msRows li.msFullfillment').each(function(index) {                    
    if(typeof $('#hfOrd'+index).val() != 'undefined'){
        var $this = $(this);
        var orderId = $('#hfOrd'+index).val();                      
        // repainting logic
        $('body').append(data);
        $('#ajaxProducts ul.displayPoints li').each(function(index){
            var $child = $(this);
            if(typeof $('#hfAjaxOrderId'+index).val() != 'undefined'){
                var ajaxOrderId = $('#hfAjaxOrderId'+index).val();
                //alert(orderId+' '+ ' '+ajaxOrderId);
                if(ajaxOrderId === orderId){
                    // replace the div here..
                    var anchorText = $child.find("#pointsLineAjax .redeem").text();     
                    $this.find("#pointsLine .redeem").text(anchorText);
                    return false;
                }
            }
        });

    }
});

Return false inside child loop doesnt go back to the parent. That doesnt seem to write it to the corresponding row. What am i missing here..

Answer 1

Returning false only breaks out of the inner loop in a jQuery loop, there is a good explanation for the reason in this answer .

The problem here is that while you can return false from within the .each callback, the .each function itself returns the jQuery object. So you have to return a false at both levels to stop the iteration of the loop. Also since there is not way to know if the inner .each found a match or not, we will have to use a shared variable using a closure that gets updated.

Try the following:

$('#listingProducts ul.msRows li.msFullfillment').each(function(index) {                    
    var continueLoop = true;
    if($('#hfOrd'+index).length){
        var $this = $(this);
        var orderId = $('#hfOrd'+index).val();                      
        // repainting logic
        $('body').append(data);
        $('#ajaxProducts ul.displayPoints li').each(function(index){
            var $child = $(this);
            if($('#hfAjaxOrderId'+index).length){
                var ajaxOrderId = $('#hfAjaxOrderId'+index).val();
                //alert(orderId+' '+ ' '+ajaxOrderId);
                if(ajaxOrderId === orderId){
                    // replace the div here..
                    var anchorText = $child.find("#pointsLineAjax .redeem").text();     
                    $this.find("#pointsLine .redeem").text(anchorText);
                    continueLoop = false;
                    return false;
                }
            }
        });
    };
    return continueLoop;
});